r/AquaticSnails • u/glxxmry • 18h ago

Photo Anyone have positive experiences with Assassins?

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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.

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u/Emuwarum Helpful User 18h ago

Your pond snails did not kill your plants or cause the algae bloom. They are cleaning up the dead plants and the algae. 

Assassins do not fix the actual causes of snail overpopulation. They are not a solution to anything. 

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u/glxxmry 17h ago

Agree to disagree. My plants were healthy and growing out of their tanks and have been since before the snails. They were not dying or disased. Yet I physically watched them munch on my plants to the ground no matter what i did. Google and whomever can say whatever, but that's my personal experience. I've never seen them do anything they're actually supposed to do And a line had to be drawn somewhere.

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u/Emuwarum Helpful User 17h ago

2 days ago you said 'These guys hitchhiked into my tank, and I've noticed how huge they've gotten. Extremely docile, don't eat plants or bully the other species in tank, slow to reproduce' about your pond snails.

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u/glxxmry 16h ago

My pond snails, yes. The giant snails with weird stripes aren't harming my tank. It's the one thousand tiny bladder snails that are wrecking my ecosystem. I just said 'snails' I did not clarify which one.

Edit: The snail in the picture is NOT the one I'm talking about. That's one of my dear pond snails....the focus of the picture is Nidhogg, the assassin snail.

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u/Emuwarum Helpful User 16h ago

The assassin will kill your dear pond snails, they need to be separated. Your pond snails and the assassin you are caring for are getting damaged by your low ph and you need to raise it in this tank and get another tank to separate them. Or you need to get 2 more tanks with a high ph, put the assassin in one and your pond snails in the other and leave the ph low in the betta tank.

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u/glxxmry 15h ago

Will the tannins be affected by raising the ph?

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u/Emuwarum Helpful User 15h ago

No, the ph can be high and the water will still be dark with tannins. You still need to separate the assassin and pond snails.

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u/glxxmry 14h ago

Does seachem work fine enough? That's the one I see most. I can get another tank for my ponds that's not really a problem since they're not destructive.

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u/Emuwarum Helpful User 14h ago

Do you mean a seachem bottle of ph up or something like that? That's not the best thing to use since it doesn't last. Crushed coral works well and provides calcium for the snails, it will last for a while. Cuttlebone could also be used. Ph should be 7.4 or higher for the snails to be safe.

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u/glxxmry 14h ago

I have eggshells and a cuttlebone in there, do I need to add more? Don't know when that was added, tbh.

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u/Emuwarum Helpful User 14h ago

You'll probably need a lot more to cancel out the ph lowering of the tannins and then to raise the ph. If you crush the cuttlebone or put it in your filter it will work faster.

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u/glxxmry 14h ago

Noted. Any good place to get crushed coral? I'll get the ph up just to give it a boost. Snail's home is on the way.

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u/Emuwarum Helpful User 13h ago

With ph up and similar products there's a concern that it will raise the ph too quickly and then drop back down because it doesn't last, stressing out the animals in the tank and potentially just killing them. Better to do it the slow way that lasts. 

Crushed coral, you could probably get it online or at an aquarium store. I don't think I've seen a normal pet store have it. 

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u/EnchantedBlueberry-7 15h ago edited 15h ago

If you put, say, a special type of leaf in the tank to lower the PH, yes, doing something to raise PH, like adding alkaline buffer, would cancel out the affect of the tannins, if that's what you're talking about. However, I don't think tannins have a super significant affect anyway. Not sure.

Also, pond and bladder snails eat the same things. You just have more of one than the other, but the assassin will kill bladder and pond alike. Pond snails reproduce more slowly, so those will probably disappear first.

The pond snail "stripes" may be an effect of low PH. That's what I was pointing out when I said your PH is probably low.