My assassin snails are duds!

I have a massive bladder snail problem in my shrimp tank. In desperation I removed as many rams horns as I could find, even set up a holding tank for them, I love my rams horns, and added 3 assassin snails.

I have sat watching as the assassin snails walk right over the hundreds of bladder snails and totally ignore them. Meanwhile, 2 rams horns that I missed have both grown big and fat, again the assassin snails just glide past them.

They look like assassin snails, black and yellow bumblebee coloration, they just don't act anything like the videos of assassin snails I watched, I have no idea what they are eating but they are healthy and active. And in case you are wondering, they also totally ignore the shrimp, I have a big time shrimp explosion, which is exactly what I wanted, I started with 15 and now have over 100 that I know of.

So since I rely on natural methods in my shrimp tank and these assassin snails are duds, I have discovered that the bladder snail like the cholla wood. I lined all my cholla wood up front and daily I take water from the tank, put it in a bowl, remove the cholla wood and shake out the bladder snails and any baby shrimp. I then take a spoon and carefully scoop out the shrimp and I'm getting 50 to 100 bladder snails daily to dispose of and still see no difference is their numbers, that is how bad my infestation is.

I'm just so frustrated over the whole thing. I'm in a all out war with these bladder snails and they are winning hands down. I don't even have luck with what should be a predator of them.

 

Can we have a picture of said snails? They could be something other than assassin snails. Good job on the shrimp! What kind?

 

If your bladder snails are reproducing quickly, it is because you are overfeeding usually. If there are too many to pick off by hand, place a piece of zucchini overnight in your tank. In the morning, take it out with all the snails on them and dispose of them. Keep on repeating if there are THAT many snails in the tank. However, snails actually benefit your tank, so I kept mine (I got my snails by accident too!) I would leave just a bit in your tank and do not overfeed.

 

My assassins eat snails but also eat other things. They took a while to get going but ultimately they decimated by pest snail population more than I wanted. And my assassins started breeding out of control. I like some level of pests in my tanks. Mostly I like the ramshorns. Now I pick the other snails and put them in the assassin tank. And I am picking baby assassins out from time to time. I have a bucket with 70 or 80 assassins in it. I am going to take it to the fish store and give it to them.

I kept about 12 to have an assassin squad I can deploy if any of my tanks get over run.

 

To answer the questions.

I'll try to get a pic of the snails tomorrow on my day off.

My shrimp are cherry shrimp, now on my 3rd generation and I have some beautiful mid to dark reds, I'm a proud shrimp mama, lol. There are also 5 amano, and 2 ghost shrimp. It's the cherry that are having a population explosion since amano larvae need salt water to grow and the ghost must be the same sex.

Not over feeding is hard since the shrimp tank is all natural, driftwood, dried leaves, rocks, live plants, ect. Being a shrimp tank, I actively cultivate bio film and allow algae to grow on 2 sides of the tank, all great shrimp food, especially baby shrimp food, but even better snail food.

I want snails, I adore my ramshorns and if I ever get this bladder snail infestation under control, I will put them back in the shrimp tank and move the assassin snails to the now ramshorn snail holding tank. I don't even mind a few bladder snails. I managed to get them under control in the big tank because I added enough various fish and nerite snails that they can't get over fed, so the few I do have in that tank are fine with me. I just have a problem with the hundreds in the shrimp tank, it's only a 20 gallon.

 

got some pics this morning of one of my assassin snails.

 

Yep, thats an assassin

thats one of mine hiding away