Assassin Snail - Clea Helena

Anentome helena or Clea helena is a beautiful freshwater snail with a pointy, spiral shell that reaches up to 1 inch (2.5 cm) long. The shell has a ribbed texture and is easily recognized by the alternating dark brown and yellow stripes that look like a bumblebee pattern. You may see it crawling around with a prominently extended siphon tube, which is used to suck in water for passing it across the gills and detecting food. Like the Malaysian trumpet snail, the assassin snail likes to bury itself in sand or gravel substrate, and it will extend its siphon out of the ground, allowing it to easily breathe in fresh water and smell the surrounding area. As soon as it gets a whiff of food in the vicinity, it will pop out of the ground to go hunting.

This Southeast Asian snail is found in Thailand, Malaysia, and the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. Because of its small size, one snail can easily live in 2 gallons of water or more at temperatures of 70–80°F (21–27°C). Like most snails, it prefers alkaline pH from 7.2–8.0 and moderate to hard GH. If you notice the snail is developing holes and pits in its shell, you may have soft water and need to add crushed coral and mineral supplements to ensure healthy shell growth.

Tank Mates:

Given its common name, you should remove all snails that you do not wish to get eaten. When kept in groups, assassin snails have the ability to take down larger snails, such as mystery, nerite, and Sulawesi rabbit snails. However, they do not tend to attack their own kind and are safe to keep with peaceful fish, aquarium plants, dwarf shrimp, and other non-snail invertebrates. To avoid having the hunter become the hunted, avoid putting them with snail-eating animals, such as pufferfish and certain types of loaches.

Diet:

As mentioned before, these carnivores love to eat snails of all kinds, and given the opportunity, they will also eat deceased animals, fish eggs, and newborn fry (or wrigglers) that are not freely swimming yet.  When you run out of pest snails, you can feed them any kind of high-protein fish food, such as frozen bloodworms, fish flakes, pellets, sinking wafers, and Repashy gel food. To help them grow strong shells that are free of cracks and other imperfections, don’t forget to offer mineral-enriched foods, like nano banquet food blocks and Hikari Fancy Guppy pellets.