And now for something a little different ...

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After following Crabs' advice, I was able to address the leak issue. I find this video immensely more satisfying:

 

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Now that I got the leak figured out, I had to actually figure out how I was going to plumb these two systems together.

Really pretty CAD drawing to be added later.

 

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Once I finished the design, I realized that I was going to need a bunch of 45° elbows to make it work. After pricing them out in schedule 80, I went with the cheapo option leveraging schedule 40 stuff and the best spray paint Home Depot had to offer:

And I realized that my 1" pipes were going to be about 18" shy of the run I needed, so i decided to supplement them with their $2.89 cousins from Home Depot:

My lawn, wife and kids may never forgive me.

 

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I was looking at some of the leftover parts from my previous attempt at plumbimg two systems together and realized that i was about to repeat my mistake. By use hard lines between the overflow and the piping mounted to the wall, I would put unnecessary pressure on the bulkheads and gaskets. Instead I opted to use tubing to give some."wiggle room" between the oveflow and the drain pipes leading back to the main.

Wish I had taken some better shots of the process of trying to measure these out and account for differential in the curve. I'm pretty sure that I had to use some 8th grade geometry, but I can't get anyone to cosine that.

I also managed spill an entire can of pvc primer in the process. I didn't get any shots of the purple mess it made, but found that pvr primer makes for one heck of a paint stipper and dermabrasion fluid:

 

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My fishroom is a bonus room that was built onto the back of the garage. As a consequence, one of the was is actually an exterior well, complete with stucco from the 1950's. There's some advances to this space, easy access to water, its the only room in the house that has installation (the original owners kept exotic birds, how crazy is that?), and it's far enough away from my wife that she can't get too angry when I inevitably flood the room.

On the downside, stucco is pretty difficult to mount things to:

 

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Despite my drillint challenges, I was able to get the return pipes mounted to the wall with a an angle steep enough to avoid a stagnation problem:

 

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Figuring out the return was another challenging. I wanted to be able to continue utilizing two pumps to service my main tank and didn't want to add a third. I designed a splitter to come off of the chiller and feed both the main tank and the new one.

I wanted to make sure that it was level under the poorly guided notion that this was reduce the likelihood of backflow if the pump was off.

 

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She's Alive! (queue Weird Science theme song)

Or leak test #3

 

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Leak test #3 was a success, so it was time to add the sand back into the tank.

From clear as day:

To get a little mud on the tires:

 

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I'm not a particularly patient man, which has lead to many of the challenges highlighted in this thread.

To that end, I reinstalled the HOB filter to kick-start the decoding process and hopefully clear out some of that muck:

 

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After about an hour, I could see first renderings of my rock structure:

 

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Now that the tanks are linked up and the dust has settled, I decided it was time to add the little goobers that inspired this project:

I'll try and add another shot after nightfall, when glare will be less problematic.

 

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Save for future "less glare" shot.

 

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After failing to deploy the auto timer I had previously purchased, I upgraded to the Kessil wifi dongle. Fancy name for a $100 adapter, but well worth it.

The setup on the system was very straightforward and much more intuitive than the classic controller.

 

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And now we have the finished product:

Video to be added later (when I understand how to account for my shakey camera skills).

 

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My ATO is on the fritz. Based upon my attempts to read the poorly translated manual, I think the controller was exposed to water. I've attempted to dry it out by using a desiccant, but I'm not hopeful.

 

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I'm attempting to revive this STNing coral. Fingers crossed.

 

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I purchased one of the Polyp Labs' lenses and took it for a spin:

 

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