Removing substrate?

[flappinganimal]

Hi. I was wondering if anyone could give me advice. I have a long established planted tank which is lookong a bit all over the place at the moment and I'd like to give it a bit of a make over. When I first set it up about 2 years ago (?) I placed the substrate in an unusual way which I'm now not happy with, way too much at the front of the tank. It's layered up with volcano rock substrate and aqua soil. So my question is can I get in there and scoop out a load of substrate without draining the tank and removing live stock? Is there a cleanish method for doing this? I'll try to attach a photo so you can better see what I mean.
Thanks very much in advance.
Peter.

 

[Ryan Thang To]

Hi
I would uproot the plants first and use your syphon hose to suck up the substrate. Just make sure hose is wide enough so it won'tget stuck

To be honest i like it how its is. Look different but cool

Cheers
Ryan

 

[Silviu Man]

Hi!
In my opinion, no reason to change in that way you mentioned. Looks nice and there are too many plants to remove if you decide to make the change.
Cheers!

 

[Tim Harrison]

Looks pretty good to me as well

 

[flappinganimal]

Hi. Thanks very much for the comments . Well I just spent an hour and a half with my arm in the tank. Didn't brave removing any substrate but was quite ruthless with some of the plants.
The carpet plant (frustrated that I can't remember it's name right now) used to be so much thicker and more lush but has gradually thinned out and lost its vigour. I think it might be down to all the other plants restricting circulation to the bottom of the aquarium. We're you can see the java fern on top of the wood was covered from top to bottom in thick fern until I recently removed a load. But I wasn't happy with the way it looked like it had a crown on its head so iver removed it and placed the clump to the left of the wood, it might stay there, I'll see how I feel about it over the coming days. So now all the wood is much more visible and I've removed some of the red crypt from near the front of the tank where the raised substrate is. I'll take your guidance and leave the substrate.



P.s. I'll 're upload the pic