After three weeks of battling leaks and my lack of plumbing ability, the tank finally holds water!
I had to call in the professional (my brother-in-law plumber instructor) and we are ready to proceed to the next step.
Nemo has finally gotten wet!
We began to plan the aquascaping today and hopefully will get the dry rock into the tank tomorrow. This shows our first thoughts on how we might do the aquascaping. We have about 70 lbs of dry rock and will add some live rock to that.
We discovered a bit of a problem while we were testing for leaks. The silicone job on the overflow was terrible.
Part of it looked terrible and the other side acted more like a sieve than a seal. So while we were trying to get the plumbing solved we cut out the overflow, cleaned everything and today I put it back in place. For some reason there had been slits cut in the overflow along one side from top to bottom. The previous owner sealed it, but it looked ugly - here is the before and after. It is now resealed and a bit nicer.
If all goes well we will have the dry rock into the tank by tomorrow and then start adding water!