snails vs loach

Planted tank, don't mind the snails but they're getting a bit much, and
I know they're a significant percentage of the bio-load now (hundreds of
mostly malaysian ones). Turn the gravel over nicely, but I'm thinking
about reducing the numbers.

Clown loach would seem to be a good way - I have three khuli's and
they've never shown any interest in the snails. Mixed community tank,
with angels/gourami down to harlequin rasboro and cardinal tetras. Also
oto and somewhere there should be a dwarf bristlenose pl*c but can't
find him at the moment.

Am about to re-plant after high temp faulty heaterstat killed off most
of the plants, and was considering a snail-eating loach or two - the
elimination of the snails means the filtration would then cope with the
bio-load of the loaches.

The tank is a 28US gallon long, so size is somewhat of an issue - I
believe clowns can get quite big and certainly sound like they'd outgrow
the tank.

Are there any other alternatives to the clowns on the snail-eating
front, that'd be happy as a small group (3 max) in a well-planted tank
and stay fairly small sized for a couple of years? (quite happy to
re-home with LFS once they've grown a bit). I've heard things about
yoyo's sucking on fish.. not keen to have that happen.


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Velvet