Building my first loach tank

[RIFF-RAFF]

Hi All, Been hiding in the background of this site for a while now and think its finaly time i joined and asked some questions before i go to much further.
I'm currently setting a tank up for just clown loach's. Been toying with the idea for the last couple of years now and decided to definatly go for it after my black ghost knife almost killed one of mine a few weeks back.
I went and got myself a jewel rio 180 tank for the time being that i've added a full bio fx5 filter to, Built some caves and put my original 2 fish in that are about 4" and 6".
Left them a few days and got another 8 loach ranging from about 3/4" to 1 1/2". Their all eating happily and playing together and doing what i would expect.
Got a couple of plants (No idea what they are) and some java moss and got that growing over the caves for them. Had a power head running but that was to powerful with the fx5 for the smaller fish so turned that off for the time being.
I'm looking at adding about 30 small loach to this tank until their a bit bigger them get them a much bigger tank to play in.
I'm currently feeding them bloodworm (Live and frozen), aquarian flake, pleco wafers and trying to convince the lfs to supply me with some cheap live snails from his ever booming amount.
I will be adding more plants (Going with a waxy feel plants)as i've been told that clowns don't eat these.
What i'm looking to find out is.

What other foods can i feed them?
What is this skinny disease?
Is their any plants that are poisonous to them?
How do clowns get on with big sumps as i've already had to break apart an overflow box to save one.
Anything else i might have missed. I want this tank to be as much like it would be in the wild as i can possible make it. Moneys no object if they need it they have it.

This is my first time in keeping a community fish as i've always had oscars before (well still have).

[chefkeith]

Building up a large shoal of loaches can be very difficult and disheartening if not done carefully. You'll need to start quarantining new fish before adding them to the main tank. Every time you add new fish, you risk wiping out the entire tank. You have to be careful with live foods and plants also, as they can harbor hitchhiking parasites as well. So you might want to raise your own snails to insure that they are disease free. New plants should be dipped in a bleach water or potassium permanganate solution.

Clown loaches will eat about anything. I'm a fan of the Omega One line of fish foods. My loaches also enjoy cocktail shrimp, and most seafood, fresh or frozen, such as Cod, Tilapia, Clams, Mussel. Fresh Veggies also, like cucumber and zucchini.

Skinny disease: there is really no such disease, it's just a term that is used to describe an emaciated fish that is probably plagued with internal parasites or bacterial infections.

Loaches will sneak into any crack or crevasse that they can fit in. So you'll need to loach proof any filter. They are escape artists also, so you'll need to make sure they can't jump out of the tank or onto something above the water surface.