How do assassin snails reproduce

Share on Facebook. Pinit on Pinterest. Share on Twitter. Subscribe to our YouTube Channel. An Assassin Snail has become a popular freshwater snail to keep. Assassin Snails have a reputation of being able to help keep populations of some other freshwater snails in check. While keeping a small group of Assassin Snails in a tank may reduce the numbers of Trumpet Snails somewhat, Assassin Snails should not be considered the only solution to snail population explosions.

Keeping Trumpet Snail populations in check can also be achieved by removing excess uneaten food from substrate by regular vacuuming. When buying Assassin Snails look for specimens that appear active. An Assassin Snail should be affixed to hard surfaces like aquarium glass or decorations. Assassin Snail shells are gold color with a dark brown stripe wrapping around it from aperture to apex. Their shells should appear free from cracks, splits or other damage and their operculum should be visible on the top of their foot near their backside.

An Assassin Snail body and foot are a light cream color, with darker specks sprinkled throughout. Make sure the Assassin Snail has a complete Proboscis, as well as two tentacles, with an eye near the base on each. Be mindful that snails may be kept in display tanks with rougher fish that may take nips at them. So make sure the snail looks healthy, active and complete. Avoid buying Assassin Snails from display tanks with an unusual amount of dead or sick looking tank mates, as these can be indications of poor conditions and unhealthy snails.

Also avoid buying Assassin Snails if the they appear motionless on the tank bottom or floating as these can be indications the snail is sick or dead. One of the good things is that Assassin Snail care is no too difficult. Its not as easy as caring for some other types of snails, but as long as water conditions are right, and food is plentiful, Assassin Snail care does not take much effort.

The keys are tank size and stability. When adding new Assassin Snails to a tank, go so slowly and gently. Try to make sure the display tank water in the plastic bag matches the new tank water parameters as closely as possible.

Assassin Snail Size. Under the right conditions, a well fed, mature Assassin Snail can grow to be upwards of 3 inches. An Assassin Snail does not like sudden shifts in water parameters, so make sure the aquarium is well filtered and heated. Also make sure the tank has fully cycled , established itself, and stabilized before introducing them.

Its important to keep Ammonia and Nitrite levels at 0 ppm. Its also important to keep Nitrate levels low with regular partial water changes.

Along these lines, be careful when adding medications and plant fertilizers. Assassins may be sensitive to some of their ingredients, especially in high concentrations. The same goes for temperature. Assassin snails can easily thrive in a wide range of temperature conditions 18 — 30 C 64 — 86 F.

However, the optimal temperature should be in the range of 24 — 28 C 75 — 82F. Especially, if you are planning to breed them. When the temperature drops too low for Assassin snails their metabolism slows down and they tend to bury until it is warm enough. No special requirements. Lighting should be adapted to the needs of plants in the tank. Assassin snails will thrive in aquariums with sandy or soil substrate that they will be able to delve into.

Ideally, your substrate should be deep enough to burrow down into the ground and disappear. First of all, it will give the aquarist an opportunity to watch their natural behavior. Second, the soft substrate plays a major role in breeding.

Hard substrate rocks, gravel prevents them from burring that can stress them a lot. In addition, newly hatched and baby Assassin snails tend to spend a lot of time hidden underground. By sifting through the substrate, they also prevent the risk of gas pockets being built up which can be very dangerous to your fish or shrimp. Important : Do not forget to acclimate your snails. When adding new Assassin snails to your tank, go slowly and gently. Be careful with chemicals like copper read more.

Crabs, shrimp, and crayfish do not tolerate copper-based medications. Clea Helena is gonochoristic and fertilization is internal. This means that both a female and a male snail must be available for them to reproduce. There is no apparent sexual dimorphism in the shell structure. Males and females cannot be distinguished by external features. That is why it is necessary to have at least 4 — 5 Assassin snails to ensure that both male and female are present.

In Clea Helena, courtship starts with the male climbing over a female shell and holding it firmly for a period of 20 — 30 minutes. After that, the male slightly slides towards the female right side and starts grasping with his penial sheath searching for genital aperture. During this process; the male transfers semen to the female. According to the observations , copulation can last for 3 — 5 hours. It usually occurs in a night time. In some cases, the mating activity may be communally.

Eventually, the males and females separate, and the females go off to lay their eggs on a hard surface such as driftwood , rocks, glass, or plant stems presumably as a protective mechanism. The fertility rate of Clea Helena is pretty low. Females usually deposit between 1 to 4 egg capsules per clutch in a straight line, separated from each other by 5 mm approximately.

Eggs capsules are square in shape, nearly transparent, and approximately 3 to 4 mm in width and length. The eggs in the capsules are less or about a millimeter in size. Over a period of 46 — 58 days, the white-yellowish egg turns light brown, it means that the embryo undergoes complete non-feeding, benthic development before hatching.

Important to know : The higher the temperature the faster they will hatch. Assassin snails do not breed at all if the temperature drops below 20C 68F. Newly hatched baby Assassin snails are about 3 — 3. They do not stay on the substrate and prefer to bury into the substrate feeding on microorganisms they find there. Therefore, it is absolutely important to have soft substrates in breeding tanks.

They eat the same food just like the parents. Unless there is an infestation of pest snails in the tank, and temperature suites them, do not expect Assassin snails to breed systematically. In most cases, it will take several months before you can get first baby snails. The good this, though, is that baby snails have a very high survival rate.

Assassin snails have become targeted by the freshwater ornamental trade industry, due to their predation abilities on other snail species that frequently became aquarium pests such as Bladder snails , Pond snails , Ramshorn Snails , and Malaysian Trumpet Snails. Nonetheless, in some cases, people are not satisfied with the results.

They complain that Assassin snails do not eat them fast enough. There can be several reasons for that:. Assassin snails are active predators of snails. They will be a serious threat to any freshwater snail species in the tank.

There is no safe snail for Assassin snails. Every now and then I see different posts on forums and Facebook groups where people ask can they keep them with big snail species like Mystery snail , Chopstick Snail, Rabbit Snail , Japanese Trapdoor Snails , etc. Sometimes people say that they have been keeping Assassin snails even with Nerite snails without any problem. Personally, I would not recommend doing it. If it works for them, it does not mean that it will work for you. Sooner or later but your luck will run out especially if you have several of them.

It is a pretty interesting fact that Assassin snails can behave like a pack hunter in attacking larger snails. Therefore, do not keep other snails with them, they will try to eat any snail. Note : Snails without an operculum are particularity vulnerable to attack. However, even snails with an operculum, like Trumpet Snails, are no match for a hungry Assassin Snail. There are also some conflicting data about Assassin snails compatibility with dwarf shrimp. Some people say that they will be fine with dwarf shrimp.

Others witnessed some aggression or at least strange activity. Some time ago I researched this topic and came to the conclusion that Assassin snails do eat shrimp. So, the answer is absolute yes! Of course, it is very sad to see the death of the shrimp.

Nonetheless, believe it or not, but from an ecological viewpoint that can be good for the shrimp colony. The point is that healthy shrimp are too fast for them to catch.

Therefore, if they catch weak shrimp it leads you to have a stronger better shrimp colony later on. Therefore, if they caught a shrimp, you can tell yourself that they did culling for you.

Selective Breeding. Do Assassin snails attack dwarf shrimp very often? No, they do not. On the contrary, these incidents are pretty rare but they happen. Their tankmates should include other calm and peaceful community tank fish for example, Pygmy Cory Catfish , Otocinclus Catfish , etc.

Keep Assassin snails away from all types of freshwater crabs except Thai Micro Crabs , crayfish even Dwarf Mexican crayfish , and even some types of predatory shrimp such as Macrobrachium family. All of them can be very aggressive towards the snails. Assassin snails are freshwater snails that do not require special care. Even without their beneficial task of consuming pest snails and meaty residues, they are very personable snails that are quite beautiful in appearance. They are also considered to be quite hardy and can be a great addition to any freshwater tank.

Your email address will not be published. Save my name and email in this browser for the next time I comment. Lucky bamboo Dracaena sanderiana is not just touted as a popular houseplant anymore. More and more aquarists start using this species in their terrarium, paludarium, and aquarium setups, owing Palm tree polyp Clavularia viridis is a unique, fascinating colonial coral that makes an excellent candidate for established reef aquaria.

This species is also known as Clove polyp, and it Skip to content Assassin snails Clea Helena are one of the most common snails in aquarium hobby these days. I was amazed at the fecundity of ramshorn snails sharing an aquarium with a batch of Ancistrus fry I was growing out. The near-constant presence of soft vegetable matter fueled a population explosion. Once we have decided that our snails are too numerous, what is the best way to remove them?

Manual removal and trapping can reduce their numbers. Some fish snack on them, and others are very effective snail hunters, such as most pufferfish and many loaches. As a last resort, there are commercially available chemicals sold for use in aquaria that can kill snails, if used as directed.

The name says it all—this species actually attacks and eats other aquarium snails. Assassin snails Clea helena are distinctive in appearance, and thus easy to recognize. They sport an attractive black- and light brown-striped shell, a light-colored body with small, darker flecks, and a very thin, prominent proboscis, something like the proboscis of a trumpet snail but much thinner and lighter in color.

A few years ago, I bought five of these snails, and I have been very pleased with the results. This article documents my experience with these shelled assassins. It must have been about six years ago when I first became aware of this species via an advertisement on an online auction site, posted by a seller from somewhere in Europe. The price at the time was prohibitive, but I was intrigued. I began to do a little more research, so by the time I saw them for the first time at my local fish store in September of , I felt I was ready to try them out.

There were not many snails in the fish aquarium to start with, so I bolstered the food supply by seeding the tank with ramshorns and pond snails from a snail breeding tank that I maintained for my dwarf puffers. Within an hour, I saw at least one assassin snail attacking a large ramshorn.

Though it apparently abandoned the attack, within a few days I noticed that the population of ramshorn and pond snails had dwindled somewhat, so I added more as needed every few days. As previously mentioned, I used to maintain a snail-breeding tank as a food source for a dwarf pufferfish or two.

Once I began to use these ramshorns and pond snails to feed my assassin snails, demand soon exceeded my supply. I moved the assassins into a gallon tank, complete with a large number of Malaysian trumpet snails inhabiting the gravel.

Within a month or so, all that remained were empty shells. Some weeks later, because my population of ramshorns and pond snails needed a bit of recovery time, I asked a local fish store if they would mind parting with a few of their abundant trumpet snails as fodder for my assassin snails. Wishing to be rid of them, the manager enthusiastically bagged me a few dozen.

I added them to my tank, and within a couple of weeks the majority of the trumpet snails had been dispatched by their carnivorous cousins. For a while I would see the odd live trumpet snail, but much more common were empty shells on top of the substrate. When my supply of feeder snails abated, the fish store was happy to give me more as often as I wanted them. It was interesting to see that the assassins seemed to sense when food was added, even at some distance away.

This was apparent as these predatory mollusks often burrowed into the substrate and stayed quite still, until they sensed prey. Within minutes they emerged, and began crawling actively about the tank, proboscis fully extended. Once the food source was located, they even attacked in groups. I have given them ramshorn, pond and Malaysian trumpet snails. I have not tried other species, but some people report that assassins prey on olive nerites, while others say that they leave them alone.

Even larger snails, such as mystery snails, are apparently not immune if the assassins get hungry enough. Some snails sport a protective door, or operculum, that closes the shell opening tightly when the snail is threatened. It is possible that some species with operculae can withstand an onslaught from an assassin snail, although trumpet snails have this structure, and it does nothing to deter the assassins. But what happens when the assassin snail has eaten all of the other snails in a tank?