Issue with cleaning sand substrate

[brandus911]

So I just realized sand is going to be a pain in my ***, but hopefully you guys can shed some light on my problem. I tried doing a water change, noticing a large amount of feces littering my beautiful sand substate (crushed coral something I think, it belonged to a cichlid breeding tank prior to my tank) and I tried to suck it up.

No dice. Wouldn't move a budge.

So I figured "ok, maybe my vac is weak? I'll buy one of those awesome Pythons because I was starting to abuse my 46 gallon. In short, I got it today and sure enough the Python was amazing, did both tanks in 30-45 minutes. Much better than the 1-2 hour process before.

However, poop would STILL not be picked up in my 125 gallon sand substrate :C. I would even stick it into the sand like you would gravel, but it would just drop back down slowly while sand grains were sucked up/churned. I'm at a complete loss right now on what to do, any advice, guys?

 

[Convict2161]

Pick it up with a net? If its that heavy and clumped together maybe that's the only way to remove it?

I just take the hose and lightly skim the top barely touching the substrate.