Plumbing tanks together

[The Dave]

Hello

Looking for some advice on plumbing a new tank to My existing AIO. A little background, I Have been running a IM Nuvo 30 AIO for 2 years now. Last year I picked up a small Anemone to add to the tank and hopefully host my clown fish. Well today the Nem has been doing great, So great that it has split 3 times and is currently taking up about a 3rd of my tank. It sits high on a rock in the tank and is now so big that it is shadowing and stinging the corals on the surrounding rockwork. My first thought was to just start pulling out some of the splits and trade them off But with they way their foots are deep in the holes of the rock it will be a little tough.

My next thought was to just set up a sperate tank for the Nem and move the whole rock over to the new tank and I am finding alot of pros for this idea

1) Who doesn't love more tanks
2) I already have a IM Nuvo 15 I bought last year along with an AI Prime16, Maxspect Gure and all other Equpment needed to set up a frag tank but never got around to setting up.
3) The clown fish never hosted this Nem and choose to host a toad stool instead so this could allow me to get another pair of clowns to hopefully host the Nem as well as other additional small livestock.

I am also thinking about the additional work that goes into having a secondary system. I have the ability to set up this other tank right next to the current one and with the shelf I have for it to sit on it will naturally sit a little higher than the other. So what I am thinking is to drill the side of the back return chamber of the 15G for an overflow, I can then either split off the current return from the back of the 30G or add a small pump to move water from the main system to the other. As water is pumped into the other system it can flow back at an equal rate to the main system.

Some of the questions I have are around the bulkhead size for the overflow. I was thinking that this will not need to be a very high flow rate, maybe 100-200 GPH, Would a 3/4 or 1" bulkhead support this? Also with the low flow do I need to plan for anything specific to add to keep down noise from the overflow bulkhead or would the low flow help keep it quite?

Any thoughts or past experience that anyone could share would be greatly appreciated
Thank you

 

[Timfish]

Starting with hte last question first slower flow generally means quieter. I would go with 1" bulkhead fitting, a 3/4 would work with yur given flow rate but more capacity would be nice to already have should it be needed in the future. As far as the rest of your considerations I would go with two independant drain lines to the sump over having one drain into the other but really as long as the plumbing will handle the flow rates any configuration should be fine.

 

[CHSUB]

I did 1/2’ return, 3/4’ drain when plumbing tanks together, but like above stated should have done 1” drain; needed to valve input pump because drain could not handle flow. I put it together before I drilled the glass and stared at it for a week. Made some small changes that made a big difference, so take your time before doing anything permanent.