Description
Anentome helena, or much more commonly the “assassin snail”, hails from southeast Asia, particularly the Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesian regions. True to their name, they eat other snails, and seem to particularly enjoy the pesky ones like pond snails, bladder snails, and malaysian trumpet snails, as well as their eggs. If you want something to take care of an infestation, these beautifully patterned shells are a much better alternative to the brown of your typical pest snail! That being said, these snails are not for you if you do indeed enjoy your other gastropod aquarium inhabitants.
Caring for these snails is not very difficult, but you should remember that your water parameters need to be stable, and your filter needs to be seasoned. These snails will quickly consume your other snails, but dead snails rot very quickly, and if your infestation is particularly bad then you may experience an ammonia spike if you are not careful. These snails are happy in slightly acidic to slightly basic water, and you definitely want some minerals dissolved in the water, like with most invertebrates. The snails will gather minerals not only from the food they are given, but also from the environment they are in, so you’ll want a hardness no lower than 50ppm or so. You will also want to make sure that there is enough food for the assassin snails to thrive, since once they demolish your snail population you will most likely have to supplement them with extra fish food, ensuring that they keep eating to stay healthy. While many snails can subsist on the morsels that are found around the aquarium, keep in mind that assassins will require a higher protein diet than most others.
In terms of tankmates, the only things to truly avoid would be snail eating fish, such as Botias. As long as there is no specialized predator present, the assassin snail has very good defenses, with a hard shell and operculum that it can close to avoid danger. Just make sure that there is plenty of food and plenty of space, and you can expect your assassin snails to live around 2 years or so, keeping pests at bay all the while. Ours are currently about 1¼ inches, and you can expect them to grow a bit, possibly up to double that size, although most likely not. These snails do NOT ship individually bagged.
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