# Assassin snail how many eggs can she lay?



## deuces

I got hold of a single adult assassin snail several weeks ago and was surprised to see her laying eggs in my tank last week (I have no other assassin snails for it to mate with). Yesterday she laid another batch of eggs around the shell of a recent meal.

My question is how long can female assassin snails hold on to fertilized eggs?? I only got one of them to prevent a population explosion and that seems to have failed  Thanks!


----------



## Sagittarius-Aquarius

From the quick reading I've done, which seems a little crazy, it says she will continue laying eggs as long as she can eat fresh meat as opposed to fish flakes. Seems really odd to me.


----------



## Canadianbettas

Sagittarius-Aquarius said:


> From the quick reading I've done, which seems a little crazy, it says she will continue laying eggs as long as she can eat fresh meat as opposed to fish flakes. Seems really odd to me.


i think this might be somewhat true... when i had infestation of pond snails my assasin laid many eggs... though only 1 survived to adulthood... now i dont have any feeder snails in the tank.. i havent seen eggs in a long time...


----------



## Zebrapl3co

Some thing sounds funny when you said a batch of eggs. Asasin snails laid many eggs, but at 1 egg per spot. If you have a cluster of eggs in one spot, then it's not assasin snail egg.

*Never pay again for live sex! | Hot girls doing naughty stuff for free! | Chat for free!*


----------



## Will

Yep one egg per batch. 

They are born so small, and it takes months for them to hatch and exit from the substrate as barely visible little lethal weapons of snail destruction. These are not a snail that will easily take over a tank. Just not going to happen.


----------



## deuces

Sorry I meant to say lots of single egg batches. I'm sure they are assassin snail eggs as I've compared the pics. I was under the impression they laid one egg every week or so but can see a couple eggs per day. I have at least 20 eggs now scattered on some driftwood and empty snail shell.

She does seem to lay the eggs after a meal though as suggested by the replies. 

I'm assuming all these eggs are fertilized? They don't lay unfertilized eggs right?


----------



## Cory

The egg laying is directly related to their intake of protein. Whenever I introduce them to a tank with a healthy ramshorn population they lay tons of eggs (of which only a few survive to adulthood) and once they've decimated the ramshorns they stop laying as many or any at all. If you actually want some of the eggs to grow up you need to provide them with tiny snails to eat while still giving the adults the food they need so they dont eat the tiny ones first. I've had 4 assassins lay 30+ eggs overnight.


----------



## arc

Hey Cory when you introduce them to a ramhorn population, how many ramhorns are we talking about? And how long before they are decimated? 

I've breed up a nice ramhorn colony of about 100+ and wanted to introduce some assassins to breed them as well.


----------



## Cory

100 ramshorns would last a small group a month or two at most lol.


----------



## Kajendra

Coincidentally, these snails will be on sale at Big Al's starting Saturday.
but I doubt you want to buy more


----------



## Hitch

Kajendra said:


> Coincidentally, these snails will be on sale at Big Al's starting Saturday.
> but I doubt you want to buy more


Members on here, such as jamesren sells them at $1 each.....which is essentially the same price as the "sale" price...plus, no tax.....and you dont have to worry about the quality of the stock.


----------



## arc

> 100 ramshorns would last a small group a month or two at most lol.


Wow that's impressive. I thought that would be enough to have a balanced colony of both, where the ramhorns could reproduce faster than the assassin's could eat them. Guess it's time I really start over feeding them.



> Members on here, such as jamesren sells them at $1 each.....which is essentially the same price as the "sale" price...plus, no tax.....and you dont have to worry about the quality of the stock.


Was planning to get some from members but since I wanted only 2-4, it seemed too small an amount to bother them. With the big als sale I can get a small amount and pick up a large Cory colony also on sale this week


----------



## Cory

arc said:


> Wow that's impressive. I thought that would be enough to have a balanced colony of both, where the ramhorns could reproduce faster than the assassin's could eat them. Guess it's time I really start over feeding them.


So did I lol. It may be possible to achieve balance somehow if you really feed the snails vigorously but I don't know. Either way, it becomes a lot of work for $1 snails hehe.


----------



## Kajendra

Hitch said:


> Members on here, such as jamesren sells them at $1 each.....which is essentially the same price as the "sale" price...plus, no tax.....and you dont have to worry about the quality of the stock.


Oh I thought I included that in my post :/
Still falling asleep I think


----------



## Sunstar

They can and will lay several eggs providing the meat is good. BOY did they lay eggs. my population of rams is down/extinct in that tank so I am raising snails in another tank. never thought the day would come when I would be forced to grow snails for snails. I'd toss snails in and the assassins went nuts.


----------



## Kajendra

Sunstar said:


> They can and will lay several eggs providing the meat is good. BOY did they lay eggs. my population of rams is down/extinct in that tank so I am raising snails in another tank. never thought the day would come when I would be forced to grow snails for snails. I'd toss snails in and the assassins went nuts.


Snails for snails lol! 

I'd love to see a video of that, are there that many already?


----------



## Canadianbettas

Zebrapl3co said:


> Some thing sounds funny when you said a batch of eggs. Asasin snails laid many eggs, but at 1 egg per spot. If you have a cluster of eggs in one spot, then it's not assasin snail egg.


lol yea mine laid 1 egg per every tiny square in my meshwall ^_^


----------



## Sunstar

that was what mine did. they went onto the gimp and laid an egg in each hole.


----------



## deuces

Cory said:


> The egg laying is directly related to their intake of protein. Whenever I introduce them to a tank with a healthy ramshorn population they lay tons of eggs (of which only a few survive to adulthood) and once they've decimated the ramshorns they stop laying as many or any at all.


Well if the survival rate isn't too high then that's ok with me still. I just didn't want to wake up with 100 of them one day


----------



## Kajendra

deuces said:


> Well if the survival rate isn't too high then that's ok with me still. I just didn't want to wake up with 100 of them one day


If you could raise 100 of them though and sell them, you could make a nice profit


----------



## Hitch

deuces said:


> Well if the survival rate isn't too high then that's ok with me still. I just didn't want to wake up with 100 of them one day


survival rate for the baby snails in my opinion is pretty good, as long as there are no snail eating fish in the tank.

I started with a group of 10 semi adult assassins, and had hundreds in a matter of 6 months. Mind you they were in my snail infested pleco tank (MTS, ram horns and pond).......and they were getting all of the good quality meaty foods that my plecos get....


----------



## SmokeSR

Most of the posts in this thread don't talk about tank size so I'm curious...

How many assassin snails would be recommended for my 10g heavily planted, low tech, shrimp tank? I'm tired of picking out ramhorns and pond snails - have about 50 rams and on avarage, 5 ponds - but there's constantly egg sacs in my plants. 

I have 1 assassin snail right now and he's slowly eating ramhorns, but doesn't touch pond snails. I'm thinking I need a few more. Do they also go after egg sacs?


----------



## Hitch

rams are easier to catch than ponds, ponds will still be eaten if they can catch them. But I doubt you will see a large difference in the population of the ponds until the rams becomes scarse.

I dont think there is a rule about how many to a gallon, they are small snails that doesnt require much, people usually add them depending on how fast they want to rid of the pest snail population. 

lastly, to my knowledge, there are no reports of them touching the egg clusters of other snails.


----------



## deuces

Ironically my assassin snail went after pond snails first... i figured cuz they're bigger? My assassin is quite large too.

I have a 35 gallon tank that had a small population of ponds and at first the one assasin didnt make much of a dent in the population but after a couple months I don't see any pond snails anymore.. just their shells. Small ramshorn i still have.


----------



## theeyrietrainer

Aww man, I never see my assassin snail go after and eat any of my pond snail / ramshorn snails at all! Instead, it just goes straight after the frozen bloodworms I throw into the tank.


----------

