How do you clean a sand substrate?

After telling the owner at the LFS that I wanted to keep live plants in my tank, he suggested I consider a substrate called eco-complete. How the heck do you clean it? This is coming from someone who used a have a gravel tank a while back and I just used a gravel siphon to clean the bottom while performing weekly water changes. I would just plow the siphon right into the gravel, and it worked great. Is there a comparable tool available to clean a more sandy bottom, or will I have to just gently remove fish waste with a net or something? Recommendations??

Thanks,
Bob