Assassin Snails Eating Healthy Shrimp?

[Jmock]

I've been reading up on assassin snails and there seems to be varying beliefs that the snails will eat baby shrimp and possibly healthy shrimp as well..I can't see how such a slow moving creature can catch a shrimp? Any ideas?

J

[jeremoose]

I've kept Assassin Snails with shripm before and never seen them take a healthy shrimp. They'll only get old, sick, dying shrimp in my opinion, which kind of makes them a good thing to have in a shrimp tank.

[Mahawka]

I keep my assassin snails in my shrimp tank too. I have not seen any problems with it. And I had about 30 assassins in a 10 gallon at one point.

[Jmock]

Super! Now I can retrieve my assassins from another tank and put them in with the shrimp again!

Thanks for the replies.

Cheers

J

[Serenity]

Believe it or not, I HAVE seen them go after healthy shrimp.

I used to keep a tank at work on my desk and had 20+ healthy cherry shrimp in there and 3 assassin snails. I have videos and pictures of them getting a hold of the shrimps and going to town. Interesting watch but unsettling at the same time. The shrimp were grazing and the snail literally just came and latched on, once attached it was game over. The shrimp probably never deemed them as a threat and that's how the snail got so close as to latch on.

Give it a whirl, if you start to lose some you know what's happening. If they are expensive shrimp I guess it's your call.

I could have also had healthy but retarded shrimp too so there's that.

[Jmock]

Yikes! Thanks Senenity.

[Toirtis]

There are dozens of threads in various shrimp-keeping forums on this subject. The opinion seems that the assassin snails will occasionally predate shrimp when there is not sufficient available of their typical food source, but that the behaviour is uncommon, and I have yet to see any claim that any hobbyist has suffered a noticeable drop in shrimp population from such activity.