Ended up taking about 40 lbs of sand out ( had about 150 lbs in the tank ).
loaded the rest of the sand in buckets and ran the shower on them for about 2 hrs. Once I loaded the sand in the tank, filled it to about half way, and drained it .
and on the final fill, I used a 5g tank I have and a powerhead...ran a hose from the power head to the tank and let the water slowly fill the tank. It literally took 5 hrs to fill the tank... and yes thats me standing there reloading the 5g for 5 hours. But this way, I didn't kick up ANY sand while loading the water.
So after nearly a week of working on it, its almost there!
