# Assasin snail vs. Nertile?



## joshd (Oct 16, 2009)

So I've had a pond snail problem. Painful. I feel like I can pull out 30+ snails and a week later have a tank full again. So I bought an assasin snail. Pretty fun to watch him polish off a few pond snails :clap2:. I still have a descent invasion of the pond snails, but I am seeing more empty shells and fewer full shells.


All that just to get to my question. And that is....after the pond snails have been eradicated, could I add a good sized nertile snail to the tank with the assasin? Will the assasin eat a snail larger than itself :axe:? Or will he peacefully exsist with a larger snail :hug:? Just a curiosity.


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## Franzi (Dec 7, 2009)

That nerite will become a wonderful buffet for the assassin.


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## joshd (Oct 16, 2009)

Thanks for the input. I am not surprised by the answer. If I decide to add a nertile I will have to move the assissin to another tank.


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## flowmsp (Feb 16, 2010)

I have 3 assassins with 5 nerites atm....no deaths yet. It "may" happen, and if and when it does ill move the assassins hehe.


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## Cliff Mayes (Jan 29, 2007)

Snails are interesting creatures in their own right. I have snails and similar to algae they seem to show up regardless of any intent of mine.

As always the problem becomes, when obtaining a critter to eat/kill another, is what do you do with it when you no longer have a need for it? As heretofore stated everything needs something to eat including bacteria and snails.


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## joshd (Oct 16, 2009)

flowmsp - thanks for sharing. I wonder how many other people have had similar experiences. It would be a bit of a painful experience with the price of netriles not being too cheap.



Cliff Mayes said:


> As always the problem becomes, when obtaining a critter to eat/kill another, is what do you do with it when you no longer have a need for it? As heretofore stated everything needs something to eat including bacteria and snails.


Cliff - I agree with what you are saying. But what I had read was that the assassin snails would move on to algae and left over fishfood once the other snails were gone (although seeing him eat other snails makes that hard to believe). I hope that will be the case. Thanks for your input.


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## dhchan888 (Apr 15, 2010)

joshd- I have seen my assassins team up on and kill two of my larger nerites before. In both cases, two of my assasins latched onto the larger nerite and killed it together. I'm not sure if my case is out of the ordinary, but I wouldn't put assasin snails with any snails you want to keep. hope that helps


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## mgamer20o0 (Jul 15, 2006)

they can eat the nerites. i keep them together in several tanks with out too much trouble. you just have to know its a risk. in my cases though there still tends to be some snails left over for them to eat. also feed a high protein food so maybe thats keeping them safe.


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## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

Assasin snails will bury themselves in the gravel. That's not very interesting but they also breed there. You may think you removed all of them but you probably have babies growing up already.

I've also seen other snails gang up on a single assasin that was placed in the tank, kill him and eat him. These where the normal, plain vanilla snails that everybody has in their tanks. I don't know the name.

When the assasins are hungry they act pretty scary. I used to feed them frozen salmon and they'd form lines coming from all directions toward the piece of salmon. Moving fast toward it, one behind the other.

--Nikolay


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## Franzi (Dec 7, 2009)

Ha, yeah it's pretty amazing how fast a snail can move when you throw some sort of meat in the tank.


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