The Assassin snail (Clea helena) The assassin snail is an easy animal to keep for the control of pest snails such as Malayan live bearing snails unlike the alternative which are large loach or puffer fish, they are harmless to all fish and shrimps and also attractive, being bright yellow with dark brown bands. In the wild assassin snails spend much of their time hidden, buried in the mud or sand at the bottom of ponds or ditches where from they sense prey passing over head and rise up and chase them down. Assassin snails will behave most naturally in an aquarium with either sand or fine gravel at the bottom, the assassin snail is also most likely to reproduce in an aquarium with this type of substrate, breeding is not difficult but is fairly slow and because they are carnivores they are fussy eaters and an aquarium will only support so many of them unlike the omnivore or herbivorous snails which are the pest. The assassin snail is really a whelk and like their sea dwelling relatives are opportunist carnivores meaning that they will feed on both live prey such as your pest snails and also dead animals. In the aquarium the assassin snail will eat as well as pest snails, sinking catfish pellet and frozen foods such as brine shrimp, mysis, krill and even defrosted lance fish placed specially for them. The assassin snail is prone to becoming the prey of other animals in the tank these will include some loach e.g. clown loach, puffer fish and some nippy barbs that may harass them, not killing them straight away but could pester and injury the snail over a longer period of time. The assassin snail will happily live alongside larger snails like the rabbit snail or tetra, rainbows, gourami, small barbs like the cherry barb corydoras and bristlenose catfish.
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 09:00:01 +0000
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