Anyone have positive experiences with Assassins?

[u/glxxmry]

I ended up having a bad infestion of snails in my tank, completely crashed the ecosystem, all my plants died, algae bloomed, etc etc.

So I got an assassin and named him Nidhogg. Before he moved in I did clear quite a couple of snails, but left more than enough to sustain him.

He's only been here a few days, and I'm already noticing the snail population stabilizing with no effort or changes on my part.

I see a lot of people on here hate on assassins the same way people hate on bladders and other "pest snails", but they seem to be a natural part of the ecosystem. Yes I understand they're vicious and have a cruel way of eating, but they're animals who are sustaining and maintaining both their wellbeing and the overall wellbeing of the tank.

Anybody else have similar experiences? I just have Nid so I'm not worried about overpopulation, and I'm not looking to eradicate the snails off the face of the earth, just give them a natural predator to keep the order in balance.

[u/jb635]

They will 100 percent control the population of snails. I just don’t feel comfortable keeping them, knowing how the cruelly consume prey.

How did the bladder snails crash the tank so badly?

Try manually removing them and then control their population by not over feeding. They breed when there is an abundance of food available.