Month: June 2011

An amazing slug

We had three days of deep, dark November-esque fog and rain, and all of the June plants loved it. You could practically hear everything growing. The slug population also loved it – I have never seen such varied and impressive slugs over a two day period as when out in the backyard this weekend. I put sluggo around the few plants I care about and otherwise ignore them, but this one in particular deserved a photo:

He was more than 3 inches long, and looked impressively like a pinecone. (Arion lusitanicus or something similar, if my web search is serving me correctly?) Pretty amazing backyard wildlife!

Huge plumbing progress

Kevin with the tank, refugium in place (under the tank in the stand) and lots of work finished on all the plumbing.

He has all of the stand plumbing done and is working on finishing the plumbing through the wall. It’s slow going – precise and not much room for maneuvering, but so far things seem to be going well, without any mistakes that would necessitate cutting all the plumbing apart (though there was a near miss tonight – luckily the solvent worked just in time before things were totally solidified). Here’s an under-the-tank shot of all the plumbing there.

And a close-up on the monster-sized fittings, not yet joined up.

There’s still more to do in the garage after the in-house work is complete, but it’s looking like we might have water in the tank this weekend? We’ll fill with freshwater first and wait a few days. If everything looks good and no leaks, even after all the pumps have been turned on, then we’ll add salt. If that all still looks good, we may be able to start adding live rocks and sand in two weekends, and then it will seem like a real tank instead of a “someday” project!!