Well... I'm unhappy to be posting this right now, but feel it's important.
First, the anemone is doing excellent. She hasn't moved at all from the exact spot I placed her. The mouth is tight and so far she's not done the "inflate-deflate" dance at all. It looks like the carpet has been in my tank for years. Everything looks 100% perfect.. I'm pleasantly surprised, and obviously very happy about the carpet.
HOWEVER. I am sad to report that my female Saddle is NOT doing well

..since yesterday I noticed a slightly odd behavior coming from both clowns.. to sum it up.. they were just not swimming as much.. kind of laying around on the anemone, swimming slowly. They were both eating + breathing well and reacting to stimuli, but just not as active as they normally are. I was OK with this because it meant my carpet wouldn't be harassed as much, and would allow her to settle in.
The male clown seems to be doing better today, but so far my female is not. She has been laying on the sand bed, breathing heavy at times. Swimming to the surface... then listlessly floating down.... I see no spots of ich or any parasite issues. I'm kind of at a loss... Right now I don't have access to ammonia or nitrite test kits (stupid me.. but I thought I had a full test kit; turns out it's the API
Reef kit that doesn't have either).. I will be buying the kits today as soon as the store opens (luckily I have the day off).....
It looks like my corals and my anemone are perfectly fine, so I doubt it's a water quality issue, but you never know, and I want to test to be sure. The temp is 78.6 according to my controller.. well in the normal range. SG is 1.026.
In the interest of full disclosure, I hadn't had my sump running because I needed to fix some plumbing issues. Yesterday I added about 15-20 gallons (split up between two different times, about 10 gallons each) .. but the water was temp and salinity matched well. There is plenty of oxygen in the water - the surface is very turbid, and the overflow is introducing tons of air into the drain line.