Thoughts on SoundQubed HDS312

I finally got around to putting my sub and amp back in after sitting for a long time and got in a rush to meet my friend for beers on his birthday and didn't set my amp properly. Long story short, I fried the coils on a kicker cvr 12. Many on here are probably happy to hear a kicker is dead lol. The box I have is a custom built ported - 2.5 cubes @34hz. I'm looking for a replacement sub and think the SoundQubed HDS312 should be a good choice. I've got a apsm-1500 for the amp so I was thinking get the dual 2 to wire at 1 ohm. How do these subs sound? I was happy with the sound of the kicker but I know a lot of people on here say there are much better alternatives and I was thinking the soundqubed would fit the bill. Will the sub work in this current box? The thing that worries me is the port area. My box is around 26 in^2 and port noise comes into play when the sub would have more Xmax that the kicker it was built for.