yeah, I agree, try not to uproot any plants if you don't have to... however if it is a heavily planted tank it might be hard to siphon around them... just do your best is about all I can say... I know that the python siphons and such have a fairly large tube to suck everything up with... I recently bought one of those gravel cleaners that is run by a regular air pump... It works a lot better than one might imagine.. It still requires patience, you just sitting there, waiting while all the crap gets sucked up... the difference is you can clean and clean without having to constantly refil, and the part that cleans the gravel is smaller than most of the syphons that I"ve seen... That's why I brought it up, it might be able to get around the plants a little easier... just rinse the filter bag out when it gets really dirty... The only real downside I see to one of these is that it may get people to forget about water changes... other than that I love it... And yeah, a some of that "crap" at the bottom is good for the plants... but it does need to be cleaned once in a while... Good luck with it...