Some ideas:

Float bigger plants your Coments won't eat. Maybe H. difformis/Wisteria or Water lettuce, so you can temporarily remove them easily when netting fish.

Seed the holding tank with media from the aquatic snake tank when you get live food.

Keep a breeding population of low bioload feeders, like Guppies, so you can just thin the herd as needed (and have more control over the food quality), while maintaining the biofilter.

Keeps lots of Biospira around.

HTH