Dozen Queen Size

Dozen Queen Size
fish to eat a lot of snails?

i have a 10 gallon tank thats overrun with snails, i already had to get rid of like 200 once before and they just keep reproducing. i need a fish that will eat a lot of them and be okay with that tank and get along with a couple dalmation mollies and one otocinclus.
NOTE i dont know what kind they are, i have looked up more than a dozen kind and none are an exact match, and i want the ''queen'' snail to be left alive since it is really huge and awesome looking...i dont want to poison the tank ....By the way the snails are roughly pea-sized and lay eggs wherever they happen to be at the time...

what can i do?

forgot to mention i tried a clown loach and he didnt eat a single one after a month so i gave up on him and moved him to a more comfortable home, a 30 gal. tank
actually tried 2 different loaches and they ignored them and the eggs entirely

If you've tried loaches and had no luck, you're going to have to go for another method that doesn't involve fish. The only other fish that will reliably eat lots of snails are puffers, and those will also merrily eat your mollies and oto. You have a couple of options:

1) Manual removal. Float a piece of cucumber on the top of the tank at night. In the morning, it will be covered with snails and you can remove it. Repeat every day until the snail population is at a reasonable level, then once a week for maintenance.

2) Copper treatment. This will completely eliminate your snail problem permanently, but you do have to remove all the snail carcasses before they start to rot and make your water quality go down. Something like Mardel's Copper Safe works really well. This isn't "poisoning" the tank, as it's only poisonous to the snails.

3) Assasin snails. Not nearly as effective as the name suggests, get a handful of these guys. They only eat one snail at a time, and then go into hiding for a few days, but help reduce the population and keep it down. They're also apparently really cool snails to watch.

If you decide to keep the "queen" snail they will keep reproducing period. They are hermaphroditic, but can't self-fertilize. Nevertheless, when I put just one large one in my betta tank, they magically reproduced into 20 in a few weeks.