Assassin snails DO eat shrimp

calivivarium1

calivivarium1

Finished the fight
May 5, 2008
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Fresno, California
I had read a little while ago that assassin snails may consume freshwater shrimp; however I had not seen any signs of this in my paludarium with cherry shrimp and assassin snails.

Well, I can now confirm that they do indeed prey on adult shrimp. I came home from work today and found one of my adult assassins clutching a recently berried adult RCS. I am not sure how, but about 15min later when I returned to the tank I found two assassin snails eating the shrimp from the inside out. They left nothing but a red/clear shell of a shrimp.

*sigh* I guess I am going to have to order MORE snails to feed my assassins until my snail breeding tank can keep up with their voracious appetites.
 
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The first thing I notice from your post is you only saw the assassin snail clutching a berried shrimp however you did not elaborate whether the shrimp had previous health issues or not. If it was weak or dying to begin with, then it can clearly be suspected they will indeed prey on anything dying or dead. Note that assassins are not just predators around. They will help themselves to carrions by scavenging them. A healthy shrimp can likely escape just in time. This is not the first report regarding assassin snails eating healthy shrimps assuming the shrimp in question was healthy.
 
Yeah, I have not seen any health issues with any of my shrimp. All are eating, growing, and reproducing(though not necessarily all at once or in that order). I was actually quite happy with the shrimp that my snails ate, she was a great shade of red.

Interestingly enough, I have never seen my assassins(though that doesn't mean that they dont..) munching on the micro-crabs pellets that I toss into the tank now and again. I have however seen them eating algae wafers.
 
calivivarium1 said:
Interestingly enough, I have never seen my assassins(though that doesn't mean that they dont..) munching on the micro-crabs pellets that I toss into the tank now and again. I have however seen them eating algae wafers.
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My own assassin snails consume turtle pellets and shrimp pellets aside from dozens of MTS, canas and other snails, and frozen bloodworms. They have not failed to lay eggs since three months ago.:uhoh:
 
I don't find it hard to imagine at all actually. These are ambush predators, they can bury in the substrate to lay in wait. Shrimp are very focused feeders as well so its not at all out of my realm of possibility that this happened. I think its not a super common occurence, but a definite reality. When y ou own a critter who is hardwired to seek and destroy, its inevitable it will not always just eat what you woulld like it to. I saw my assassins take down an over golf-ball sized bridgesii by triple teaming it. This is one reason that I still suggest not keeping assassins in tanks with invertebrates that you really want to keep alive. They may be neat snails, but they are called assassin snails for a reason. It sounds like a great solution to pest snails but keep in mind too, they lay lots of eggs and are difficult to get out of a tank once introduced because of it.
 
I was toying with the idea of getting assassin snails for a while- I have read a couple of comments on them taking down shrimp- but it seems a fairly rare occurance...

On one hand, they take out the pest snails...

On the other hand- that means you can never have ornamental snails.



I've not had a major pest snail problem- although the bladders were beginning to grow their numbers and I was seeing a lot of little black and white dots climbing everywhere- my solution instead of assassins (and it wasn't even meant to be a solution): Ghost shrimp.

I think they've solved the problem in three ways.

1) they eat snail eggs.
2) they out compete snails in the scavenging department.
3) they eat the small snails- I've witnessed one pluck a 4 or 5mm long bladder snail moving along a piece of slate- and start eating it... started by rolling it round and around- probing at the meat as it did so.


For those trying to control snail population- and don't have fish that would eat shrimp- I'd suggest ghost shrimp ahead of assassin snails now. Within a week or so I noticed a big difference in snail population.

They will never completely erradicate the snails, and won't touch the medium and large sized one- and may not be quite as efficient as assassins...

but


You don't have to worry about keeping adult ornamental snails with them- you don't have to worry about them eating your RCS or CRS or whatever else you have. They're not a pest species you can't control yourself. Most importantly you don't have to worry about how to keep them fed when the pest snails all die.



People seem to have different experiences keeping ghost shrimp with snails- but at the very least... they will compete for food and will eat snail eggs... even if they don't eat the snails. (although mine do).
 
the idea is to have them havetheir own tank,. and hand feed them the snails out of you tanks and keep moving them over as you find them,.so you wont have to remove them,.
at least thats what i would do,.
 
Wycco said:
You don't have to worry about keeping adult ornamental snails with them- you don't have to worry about them eating your RCS or CRS or whatever else you have. They're not a pest species you can't control yourself. Most importantly you don't have to worry about how to keep them fed when the pest snails all die.
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You need to be real careful suggesting that because Marcos are often sold as ghost shrimp in places like Wal-Mart and even your LFS, and they will eat your shrimp. I have a 5 gallon that is now devoid of cherry shrimp and 2 really fat "Ghost Shrimp" as they were labeled.

The facts are simple folks.

Assassins can and will kill shrimp but only in certain and very very rare cases and one of them is clearly visible here. NO FOOD evident from this statement.....
*sigh* I guess I am going to have to order MORE snails to feed my assassins until my snail breeding tank can keep up with their voracious appetites.
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If there is live prey assassins will go after it before prepared food anytime. If there are adquete snails of the right sizes for the assassin to eat they will 99.9999% of the time go after that food source. The other .0001% of the time they will feed on dead, dying, or really stupid shrimp that you don't want passing on it's genes anyway.

I agree with not keeping them with snails that you want since the prey snails in their native area can be 3 to 4 times as big as they are and they have learned to pack hunt so making apples a target.

Keep in mind shrimp can and do kick off quite suddenly so you can not say she was alive when they started feeding on her. So far there are only 2 cases that I call valid of an assassin catching a healthy shrimp and that is because the witness saw it from beginning to end and both were stupid shrimp syndrome.

This kind of reminds me of an article I read earlier about poor Hans Finkelstien.... I really hope they make that mermorial to him what away to go.....
 
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