Upgrading Tank 20g Deep to 29g Deep Help?

[Bowels]

:fish1:
Ok so I am going to be moving my tank from a 20g deep to a 29g deep, the reason I am is because the 29g is already drilled and piping hooked up, it is a buddy's old tank. I think there is alot of value in running a sump/refugium and I really want to add it. I currently have about 30lbs of live rock, numerous corals, and 2 clown fish, I have 130 + 450 + 500 gph flow. I was wondering what the best way to move everything all over is, I would like the water to be the same if at all possible... I dont know how do people normally do something like this? Also I am confused as to how the sump return and such works.

[Wildisme02]

Look on YouTube for Uarujoey. He has alot of good videos on DIY piping and how to set up sumps.

Easiest way would probably be to put the clowns in a bucket and transfer everything over. Mind you you will need roughly another 15-20g of SW made up before hand. This allows you to add your 20g of water plus your extra 9g to fill the tank and the extra 6-11g of water for the sump.

If u want me to go into specifics on the sump sizing n all let me know but Joey does a food job of explaining all this in his videos.

[Bowels]

ok thank you :) I will check out those videos, I plan on using my 20g Deep tank for the sump, and the 29g deep for the DT, I understand how it works and what not I guess what Im still confused on is well if all that water is flowing down into the sump... what size pump do I need to send it all back up ok? also what if I lose power and water is going to continue to flow into the sump, but not come back up, wont the sump overflow, or the display tank have a lot less water in it?

[Wildisme02]

Basically you can expect 1" of water to fall to the sump. So take your width x length. Then divide it by 231. There is 231 cubic inches in 1 gallon of water.

Say in my tank it is 72x18= 1296/231= 5.61 gallons.

This means that 5.6 gallons of water will flow to my sump once power is cut.

Figure in a 20g tank. Take the amount of water that will fall and multiply by 2. Use this as ur buffer. Say it comes to 7 gallons total, that gives you 13g per say to have media and water while running.

[Wildisme02]

Your pump will depend on the flow you need as well as the overflow diameter. In a 29g tank you figure a 200gph pump will flow say 150-180gph due to pumping water upwards. This still gives you 5-6x turn over on your tank which is good.

Figure a 1/2" pipe can flow around 350-400gph. So as long as your plumbing is 1/2" you should be ok.

[Bowels]

Ok thank you for your help I have everything I need and all is set and ready to go Ill post pictures on my build thread when I have it all moved over :) cant wait