Been a while since I updated this journal, wow, April now, last update in January.
Whoops!
Got the old tank moved over, the 30g this will replace, and wrestled this new tank in place.
First, I laid down the substrate cable heater..
Then, several bucket brigades later, I got the substrate and water in. I couldn't get more Eco-Complete so I went with at least 4 bags of Volcanit subrate at the bottom and the two bags of Eco-Complete on top. This gave me about 3" depth of substrate.
So, here's where a problems showed up. Nothing too bad, but enough that it slowed my progress for a bit.
1) The Mag5 I was using as a sump return was way too loud. It practically howled and since this is a tank in the TV room, near bedrooms, I wasn't able to run the pump at night. So I needed a new pump.
2) I could not tune the overflow right. It always burped no matter where I had the air valve set at. I decided the problem must be that with the 1" overflow pipe, combined with the lateral distances the water had to travel (into the overflow, and then down, and then at least 6" horizontally back, to get into the sump) that the overflow simply didn't have the flow carrying capacity I needed for the sump return volume I was hoping for.
So I decided to step it up to a 1.5" overflow - leaving the bulkhead and 90-degree elbow in the overflow as 1".
This worked out so well that I thought I would try a Sedra 7000 as my sump return. I decided on Sedra because I have one on my ASM and it seemed quiet enough to give it a try.
Unfortunately the 7000 was way too much pump. 30 seconds on and my tank was overflowing. So again, still couldn't run a pump for a few weeks while I send the Sedra 7000 back and ordered a 5000 instead.
The Sedra 5000 is a better fit (smaller pump housing) and is the perfect flow for this tank. It's not as silent as I wished for but it is tolerable. Finally, I could get the tank cycling. Hooray!