Some animals prefer to hunt at night for various reasons. It could be due to their superpower night visions, potentially higher rate of staying safe from predators, or the presence of nocturnal prey around them. Some animals even do both; they will come out partly during the day, nap through the rest of the day, and still come out to eat at night. Every species utilizes the pattern best for them depending on their environment and how their needs are met, so also your assassin snails.
Assassin snails are both nocturnal and diurnal mollusks. They can switch from one pattern to the other depending on how available food is for them. Since they tend to take naps after most of their meals, their sleeping patterns will fluctuate and be tailored to how many random naps they choose to take.
Understanding your pet’s sleeping patterns is necessary to help you decipher a problem from a normal routine. Thankfully, this discussion will satisfy your curiosity so that you can confirm your snails are safe at all times.
How Do Assassin Snails Sleep?
When it’s time to nap, assassin snails will either bury themselves in the substrate or latch onto a suitable surface with their muscular feet. They usually find hidden areas where they feel more protected and least disturbed.
One thing about killer snails is that they don’t take long deep sleep like your regular cat or dog. You’d instead find them entering dormancy or taking short naps to restock on energy to help them digest a heavy meal before they awake and embark on their hunting trip again. They will then continue with taking short rests which could turn them diurnal or nocturnal depending on what they need.
Assassin snails can rest for 1 to 3 hours at a stretch and sometimes the whole day depending on how available their food is. If your pets have access to food at all times, they’ll take shorter naps since there is a reliable source of food around them.
3 Reasons Why Your Assassin Snails Sleep Either During Daytime Or At Night
If you have been noticing weird patterns from your assassin snails for a while, perhaps they hardly move during the day but you find them at different locations at night, there are certain reasons for this happening.
1. They Are Mimicking Their Prey’s Sleeping Patterns
Most of your assassin snail’s live prey like nerite, ramshorn, or bladder snails are diurnal mollusks. So, your killer pets will naturally prefer to work during the day making them equally diurnal. However, since they take naps frequently, they may hunt unsuspecting prey at night when they get hungry, too. Thanks to their highly specialized sense of smell, they don’t need their eyes to locate food. Using chemical signals and chemoreceptors, they locate unsuspecting prey and ambush them, rewarding themselves with a feast!
2. They Tend To Avoid Other Predators
Some water-loving birds are the natural predators of assassin snails in the wild, and the snails absolutely avoid them! Due to this, the killer pets will be wired to hide away from their predators during the day thus hunting and feeding at night when there’s no chance of them becoming prey. Relatively, assassins grown in aquariums where there’s little to no predators will affect their sleeping patterns making them more active during the day than at night.
3. The Tank Temperature Is Too Warm
Assassin snails are required to live in temperatures ranging from 70° to 80° Fahrenheit. If it exceeds this range, they may enter hiding or a stage of dormancy to preserve their energy. This in turn will cause them to hunt at night when the temperature drops, after which they would be perceived as nocturnal.
If you live in areas with hot climates and you realize that your assassin snails hardly move around during the day, check on the temperature of your tank, the aquarium heater, and the thermostat. Ensure that none of these devices, if you use them, have become redundant. This could easily explain why your snails are more active at night.
Why Do Assassin Snails Nap So Much? The Good, Bad, & Ugly
Assassin snails will sleep for a few reasons that you can tick off as normal or abnormal. In this case, it’s either you have been taking good care of your little critters, providing them with all they need to stay healthy or not.
They’ve Had a Huge, Huge Meal
Your killer snails are purely carnivorous and voracious eaters. Whenever there’s a good food source, they will feast until their guts are bulging and then proceed to nap to aid digestion. Your assassin snails may take the whole day resting from their huge meal, and come out of their sleep during the nighttime to refill. This is totally normal for them, and as long as they have eaten before the rest, your snails are healthy and safe.
They’re Starving
When your assassin snails are not fed properly, they will try to preserve energy by moving around the aquarium less and sleeping more. You’d find them to be a bit slower and more lethargic than usual, and in some cases, they’d even begin to eat algae. If you love your snails, this is a sign for you to improve their diet to meet their needs or feed them more. Assassin snails can eat daily and will survive being fed every other day, but once it exceeds this frequency to being fed even less, they’d be practically living on their wit’s end which is dangerous.
They’re Breeding
Breeding snails tend to be slower and more delicate in their surroundings compared to non-breeding snails. If your assassin snails are copulating, the females in particular will move slower and take more naps once it’s around time to lay their eggs. She does this to preserve energy and carefully scout for the best spots to lay. They lay their eggs on rigid surfaces and in areas where there’s less disturbance to improve the chances of the eggs hatching into healthy babies.
Your Snails Could Be Dying
If your snails are questionably less active, it could be due to a much more serious problem than you suspected. Stress, harassment from other tank inhabitants, and improper water parameters could be the cause of your snails sleeping more than usual which is mostly experienced before they die.
If you have other aquarium pets coexisting with your assassins, you should look closely at their relationship. They could be bullying your snails and harming them, causing them to be more lethargic than usual. Bettas and puffers are typical snail attackers and are not recommended to be kept with snails due to their aggressive tendencies.
In addition, you must ensure that you keep track of the water parameters with the necessary testing kits such as API water testers (view on Amazon) or strips, and perform the required water changes to keep your pets’ home healthy. In return, a healthy home will reward your snails with a healthy resting pattern through and through.
If you are wondering what the standard water chemistry should be for assassin snails, the table below is your guide:
| Parameters | Ideal Range |
|---|---|
| Temperature | 70 – 80 (°F) |
| pH | 7.6 – 8.0 |
| Ammonia (NH3/NH4+) | 0 |
| Nitrite (NO2-) | 0 |
| Nitrate (NO3-) | 0 |
| Copper (Cu) | 0 |
| Water hardness | 150 – 300 ppm |
| Salinity | 0 |
Are My Assassin Snails Sleeping Well?
The only way to ensure that your assassin snails have a healthy sleeping routine is by providing them with their needs. Snails are not needy creatures, and most of their requirements are simple. Give them what they need, and they’ll be living their best life all day! For their simple bodies, lack of proper rest is equivalent to stress and could result in your snail losing appetite, getting discolored, or suddenly dying from the stress.
First, you must ensure that their water chemistry is correct. Ammonia is deadly, and once the cycle is thrown off, your pets will fall sick and enter dormancy (unhealthy sleep). Also, their diet must be accurate and healthy; prey snails, blood worms, protein pallets, and shrimp are all essential items for your killer snails to stay healthy and maintain a good sleep routine.
In addition, ensure that you have the proper sleep-appreciating items for your assassin snails. They prefer a sandy substrate where they can bury themselves, and a few hiding spots to feel secure. If you follow through with these tips, I assure you your snails will have the happiest, healthiest sleep routine you can expect!
If your assassin snails sleep for days at a time, then there is something worth looking into. It means they have entered a state of dormancy to preserve their energy for as long as possible. Snails are most of the time active, so a significant change in activity level could mean their quality of life is not the best. Further signs of an uncomfortable or sick snail could be displayed as follows:
- Cracking or eroding shells
- Discoloration of the foot or shell
- Lack of appetite
- Disorientation or trouble correcting their position
- Reduced excitement to hunt prey
How Do I Tell If My Assassin Snail Is Dead Or Sleeping?
The most effective way to tell whether your snail is dead or alive is by sniffing it. If they’re dead, the smell will knock you out of reality for a few minutes before bringing you back. After a snail dies, its slime enables it to decay a lot faster and will emit a horrid stench.
If you sniff your seemingly dead snail and there’s thankfully no smell, your snail is probably just taking a long rest. It is advisable to check on the water chemistry of your tank to ensure that no foul play is causing your snail to take such lengthy sleep. For a good measure, you can throw in some food to lure it out of its slumber and have it moving around again.
