I do both shrimp and assassin snails in thanks,, The snails do not bother the shrimp at all. I sell both at my fish clubs auctions as well as the yearly January public auction.
IO started with about very few assassins. I have sold 100s. They will eradicate the pest snails and then the assassins will multiply. But try to collect and sell the pond snails v.s. assassins and you will quickly see their differing values.
There are other ways to eradicate pest snails using fish which will eat them. But One should not buy fish they do not really want to have save for the fact they eat snails. A number of loaches will eat snails. i have two such species which have elimminate the snails in their tanks but have done so in different ways. I have kept clown loaches for 23 years now and have a couple tat are c 12 inches. Loaches tend to suck the snail out of its shell to eat it. The problem was mu clowns got so nig I was afarid they would suck in the snail and i shel all together and snail shells are sharp expecially if the shell brakes. But. while the clowns were small they eradicated the adult snails.
The other loach I have kept almosy as long as the clowns are the sidthimunikis. Thse are one ot the smallest loaches there are. They cannot eat larger snails, but they can decimate the smaller ones, I have no pest snails in any tank with sids.
So there were two different strategies both of which eradicated all the snails. The clowns ate the ones which could reproduce and th sids aye the small offspring so they never made it to adulthood where they could reproduce. However, I had 20 tanks and only two held loaches. So, assassins were the next option. The fact that they are easy to sell made having them easier.
I had a lot of tanks dedicated to breeding plecos. I could not be sure that assassins would not eat wither eggs, wigglers or small fry, so I would not use the snails in those tanks. However, I had grow tanks with the pleco pffspring which got fed more than other tanks. This envouraged snails. So, I found myself harvesting the snails ing the grow tanks and dumping them into the tanks with the assassins.
Before the clowns got too large I would also dump snails I harvested into their tank and did similat with the sids. But for them I added way fewer snails. I have just order some snail Ebo Aquaristik snail food for the assassins, I have been downsizing ank numbers and now have only one pleco species left and I have two grow tanks only. In the not too distant future I will be outing the plecos as well. Old aage has made it hard to keep up with lots off tanks and having breeding fish and offspring.
I could not disagree more with GaryE when he says we can control pest snails better than assassins. Rge problem is one the pests are gone the assassins remain. Newborn assassins head into the substrate where they can grow without becoming food. The bigger ones also like to god underground as well. When I need to catch a bunch to sell and they are mostly buried at the time, I use one of the telescoping back scratchers which have a mni-rake on the end. Something like this. It works well to extract the snails hiding in the substrate.
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