You have made the same mistake as I did when it comes to sowrds. They are really nice plants which are usually sold at a small size, We do not realize how big they can get. They also tend to develope pretty big root masses as well. I had an amazon sword outgrow a 75 gal. In my one high tech tank with added CO2 I tried twice with swords. I had to give them both away when they broke the surface. I gave them to people with 6 foot tanks. What I did do was to discover compacta swords which actually stay a lot smaller. I have one today that is about 20 years old and it is maybe 10 inches tall.
Now to answer your ques remove themtion. There is bigger potential issues if you cut off all the leaves as to whether the plant will regrow. Plants consume ammonia in it ammonium form. Ammonia in water turns mostly to ammonium. The bacteria, ont the other hand, actually prefer to use ammonia itself. So, the more plant mass one has in a tank, the less nitrifying bacteria there will be. In essence the plants are doing a lot or even most of the cycling chores.
So if you remove all the leaves from the nig sword, you are also removing the amount of nutrition is need. This translates into it taking in a lot of the ammonia. This will likely cause and ammonia spike in the tank. It may also mean a bit of a nitrite one as well. This can become a problem depending upon how things go.
Next, I am not sure that if you remove all of the leave at the same time that the plant will survive and start to put out new growth. Somebody more educated in the specifics of sword plants needs to answer that for sure one way or the other.
Here is what I would suggest that you consider, Rather than removing all of the leaves at one time, do it gradually. This will get the plant to make new leaves. As these appear and are growing, you can continue to remove the bigger ones. Hopefully this will get you to where tyou want thins to be.
I have been doing plnted tanks for over 20 years now. I have never and will never use dirt as part of my substrate for just the reason you mentioned. It makes replanting a real problem Over the 10 years I kept my high tech tank, I changed the look a couple of times. This involved taking out some plants, moving a few others to different locations and then adding new plants I want to have instead. I cannot imagine doing this with a dirted bottom. Even without it, rescaping the tank always made a big mess.
Moreover, I used a fertilizer in my substrate that was time release. I used Jobe's Spikes for Lush Ferns and Palms. They work well and are very inexpensive and you can cut them to any size needed. The one problem with using them is that digging them up to rescape or remove ones with a decent root mass will 100% result in the worst algae attack you have ever seen. I explain it to people this way, you will earn your MBA (Mastered By Algae).
Bearing in mind that the Google AI is only sosom here is what it said when I asked "
can one remove all the leaves on a sword plant and have it survive?"
AI Overview
No, removing all the leaves from a sword plant (like an Amazon sword plant) is not recommended as it is highly likely to kill the plant; while it can tolerate removing some damaged leaves, it needs at least a few healthy leaves to photosynthesize and produce the energy necessary to survive and regrow new foliage.
This would seem to support my suggesting to do it gradually over time.
