Help Rescaping Planted 55gal

Happy almost New Year everyone! I currently have a 55 gallon tank that I want to re-scape. I currently have in it approximately a dozen each of Rummy-Nose Tetras and Metae Corydoras, as well as a Bristlenose Pleco, a Mystery Snail, trumpet snails, a few Nerites, a bunch of Assassin Snails, and several cherry shrimp. For plants I have several swords, anubias, java fern, rotala rotifundalia, crypts, val, and several buce. Here's a picture of it from a couple weeks ago - there are now a several more plants attached to the wood now (ignore the photobombing cat):




My goals are redoing the substrate to make it more plant friendly and reworking the driftwood to reduce shadows and make the tank more accessible when I need to work in there. Here's what I need your help on:

1. Substrate: Current I have Eco-Complete. When I first set up the tank I had big plans about creating a hill using panty hose filled with river stone on the left side of the tank. You can kind of see the higher section on the left, but it never worked out as I hoped so I want to take them out. The options I'm considering (though please let me know if you have better ideas!) are:

• Taking out the stones and just putting the Eco-Complete back in
• Doing a dirted tank capped with the Eco-Complete. My biggest concern with the dirted tank piece is having an ammonia spike from the organic matter decomposing. Anyone have issues with this or know how to avoid it? I don't really have the space to go through the whole remineralizing (soaking, drying, soaking, drying, etc) process. Is there a particular soil I could get that would prevent this?
  
• Switching out the substrate altogether for black diamond blasting sand.
  
• Dirted tank capped with aforementioned sand (same concern with the ammonia spoke)

2. Driftwood: The two pieces I have are really nice but they're so big. They take up almost the whole tank, prevent light from reaching a lot of the substrate. The wood also makes it really difficult to work in the tank or reach anything. They take up the whole depth of the tank so I can't even really reposition them. I was thinking of cutting each piece into 2 or 3 pieces and maybe making an island in the center. Anyone have any other ideas? Very much open to suggestion here!

3. The process: I need help figuring out the best process for redoing the tank. Here's what I'm thinking - please let me know if you have suggestions!

• Take the wood out (hopefully without any shrimp or snails attached...) so I have some room to work. Put wood in a big Rubbermaid type bin with some water to keep plants wet.
  
• Drain a bunch of water into another bin. Put the fish, shrimp, snails in there along with a few plants and an air stone.
  
• Pull up the rest of the plants and put them in another bin with bunch of water.
• Drain the vast majority of the tank water
  
• Put my filter media in yet another bin with tank water and a bubbler to keep everything cycled, since I'm guessing this process will take a few hours.
• Pull out the rock-filled panty hose, discard.
  
• Redo the substrate (process TBD depending on what substrate I end up going with)
• Chop up wood, place in tank
• Plant plants
• Get filters running again
• Add critters
• Get filters running again to clear up

Any and all feedback appreciated! Thank you for taking the time to read!

 

Looks great, but I agree that there are a lot of shadows. Also, probably not the easiest tank to clean.

 

Looks great, but I agree that there are a lot of shadows. Also, probably not the easiest tank to clean.

Exactly! Vacuuming is practically an effort in futility because I can only reach maybe 10% of the substrate. Looks nice, but not at all practical!

 

I had the same problem and had to redo my hardscape.

 

Bump. Anyone else have any thoughts on switching out substrate (what kind and how to go about it)?