Use a dust pan. Seriously, its the best thing for taking out gravel and sand. I have used one many a times. I recently sold my 60gal and it took all of 20mins to pull out 50lbs of gravel, and not a single scratch on the glass.
i did something like that once me and my cousins were bored and decided tp make a war hammer out of a broken brom stick a piece of a 8x8. Well while using a drill bit like thing to take the corners off it bounce off and went into my dumb. It was like slowmotion and it only hurt because it felt like i stubbe my thmb.
lol... with monster fish involved I thought this was going to be a story about mantis shrimp or a fw stingray or something... lol. sorry about your hand, but glad there was minimal suffering.