Adding an overflow water storage container to tank with sump

[Modest_Man]

I'm just tossing around this idea and seeing if anyone else has done it. My tank (210) is drilled with four bulkheads. I have a 40 gallon sump, but in order to keep the sump from over-flowing if the power goes out or the pump quits I have to keep the water level down about 2" from the trim in the tank.

I'm thinking of drilling and installing another bulkhead in the sump, above the pump return and plumbing that to a 40-50 gallon Rubbermaid in the other half of my stand. This way I could "overfill" the tank and turn down the drain flow in order to maintain a full aquarium. If the power goes out, the water drains into the sump until it reaches the level of the new hole, and drains by gravity (non-horizontal plumbing) into the storage container. I'd have to then manually move that water back into the tank when it was up and running again.

Does this make sense? Has anyone done anything like it? I'll have to draw up what I mean, it's hard to explain. I've tried searching but my search terms are pretty general and I'm not finding what I'm looking for.

 

[Arthur]

It sounds like you just need a bigger sump. If you're not able to take out and replace sump with something larger, I think your plan would work with some tinkering. You could always just drill the sump and secondary container towards the bottom of the tanks and just run your pump from the secondary container so that you wouldn't have any stagnant water.

 

[Modest_Man]

For filtration purposes the 40 gallon sump is perfectly fine, the only way I could fit all the water to fill the tank into the sump would be a 100 gallon+ sump on a 210 gallon tank. I was just planning on building my canopy down a couple inches to hide the gap, but the tank is already pretty imposing in the living room so I'm going to do as small of a canopy as I can just for the lighting.

There would be no stagnant water with the idea I'm proposing, as long as the tank was running. The overflow tub would only get water in it if the power goes out or the pump quits.

 

[Arthur]

My next question would be how are your overflows setup? You may be able to just redo your inlets, or do a little more creative plumbing on the drain to get the water level up to where you want it.

On one of my tanks I drilled it towards the middle of the tank because I figured it being a sump at some point, and it would be nice to run a drip from it. I just put an elbow, some pvc, a strainer, and I can adjust the height of the water according to the angle it's at. It is not the prettiest, but it's pretty functional.

I've also seen people plump tanks that would create a siphon if it wasn't for having an open T on the drain at the right level to set the water level. It would probably be easier for me to make a couple of quick sketches than it would be to find said threads.

 

[Arthur]

I don't know if this helps your problem or not, but these are how I have my overflows setup with tanks that I have drilled. The angle you set the elbow to controls the depth of water in your tank.