melev

Since a mouse or mice chewed through the blue self-flattening hose in the garage, I had to get a new piece. When I got some in 2011, you had to buy it by the foot requiring a Home Depot employee to cut it and provide you with a ticket to hand to the cashier. Now you just buy a roll. I got a 10' package of "1.5 inch Flat Discharge Hose" for $10, and as I walked to the car I spotted a brand new black zip tie in the parking lot perfect for this project.

The reason I use this tubing is that it stays flat when not needed. This keeps the weather from blowing in via the piping to bring in cold or hot weather into the fishroom via the french drain channel. It also should prevent things like spiders, ants, lizards, geckos and small garden snakes. So far, this has worked out fine over the past three years, but the wild mice and rats that I've encountered in my garage damaged the blue section and cause water leak into the garage instead of heading down the driveway. Duct tape could have gotten me by for a while, but I just opted to fix it with new.

Here's the new roll and my free zip tie.

I opened it up, and immediately discovered it wasn't big enough to fit over the PVC pipe. Back to Home Depot to return it and get the right size.

Fixed. The acrylic cover helps prevent me from placing anything on the hose accidentally.

Now I can finally clean out the poly tank, fill it up with RO/DI water and mix up a new batch of saltwater.

A few more macro shots to wrap up:

Platygyra pini macro.

Pocillopora

Rainbow Acanthastrea

Red People Eater palythoa.

Here is the colony of red people eaters. The white sponge grows out between them and makes them more interesting to look at.

This white skinned chalice (very light blue) has a pink spot. I'm relatively certain this is a new mouth forming. The outer edges have grown wider; I can tell when I look at this image and compare it to another photo taken a month ago.