vegetarian_great_white
02-21-2011, 04:35 PM
Hello folks,
A mixture of observations, questions and some rant:
I got some assassin snails to put in my shrimp tank and get pond snails under control. The moment I put them in the tank, they started cruising around with their long thingies extended. So I was happy that they were acting healthy, for about half a minute until my red-claw shrimp were all over them. I knew the red-claws were a mean bunch and chase my red cherries and each other around here and there but there were no serious injury. As a matter of fact, I have never seen they succeed in pinching anything alive so I was thinking they are all show. Even though they like eating pond snails when I crush the snails for them, they don't go after the healthy snails themselves. With the assassins things were totally different. They red-claws were actually able to hold them by the tube and if they couldn't, they were grabbing the whole snail and trying push them in their mouth. Needless to say, I quickly picked the assassins up and put them in another tank with some fish fry and ramshorns. Now, because I didin't want the assassins to deplete my ramshorns, I had to colelct some of them and put in the shrimp tank that I was trying to rid off of snails.
I understand red-claws are opportunistic predators but they have been pretty benign so far. Do you know what they are good with, what particularly gets them crazy like that? (They were just fine with cherry red shrimp, pond snails and killifish.) Is this a territory thing? (Other residents were already there when red-claws were introduced but maybe assassins were too recognizable as new comers?)
So, any similar experience with either the red-claw shrimp or assassins? Are there other critters you know of that assassins won't mix with (already know loaches, large cichlids, other large goldfish etc.)?
I want to find out under what circumstances I can introduce an assassin exterminator crew and then get them out without losing them I but I also want to find out what community possibilities (or rather impossibilities) are there for red-claws and assassins.
A mixture of observations, questions and some rant:
I got some assassin snails to put in my shrimp tank and get pond snails under control. The moment I put them in the tank, they started cruising around with their long thingies extended. So I was happy that they were acting healthy, for about half a minute until my red-claw shrimp were all over them. I knew the red-claws were a mean bunch and chase my red cherries and each other around here and there but there were no serious injury. As a matter of fact, I have never seen they succeed in pinching anything alive so I was thinking they are all show. Even though they like eating pond snails when I crush the snails for them, they don't go after the healthy snails themselves. With the assassins things were totally different. They red-claws were actually able to hold them by the tube and if they couldn't, they were grabbing the whole snail and trying push them in their mouth. Needless to say, I quickly picked the assassins up and put them in another tank with some fish fry and ramshorns. Now, because I didin't want the assassins to deplete my ramshorns, I had to colelct some of them and put in the shrimp tank that I was trying to rid off of snails.
I understand red-claws are opportunistic predators but they have been pretty benign so far. Do you know what they are good with, what particularly gets them crazy like that? (They were just fine with cherry red shrimp, pond snails and killifish.) Is this a territory thing? (Other residents were already there when red-claws were introduced but maybe assassins were too recognizable as new comers?)
So, any similar experience with either the red-claw shrimp or assassins? Are there other critters you know of that assassins won't mix with (already know loaches, large cichlids, other large goldfish etc.)?
I want to find out under what circumstances I can introduce an assassin exterminator crew and then get them out without losing them I but I also want to find out what community possibilities (or rather impossibilities) are there for red-claws and assassins.