But first a brief glimpse behind the scenes these last 4 months:As another hurricane season drew to an end, the beginnings of the new seawater system unfolded and we could finally focus on the task at hand.
October 2008 behind the KML wetlab
November 2008:Laying drain pipes, setting up and leveling a variety of tanks and wet tables and plumbing them to the drain.
The pipes had to be carefully covered with dirt - 1 wheel barrow load at a time
Mike and Bill carefully selected and moved large tanks into position with equipment on-hand
A new view of the outer wet lab under the shade lattice with more tanks in place
Old Shallows 4 had to be cleaned out, repaired, sealed, and painted with a special epoxy paint to prepare it for our new seawater holding pond
Bill is the master-mind behind the building of the seawater intake system - affectionately called "the octopus" (well, it really has only 6 legs but it is a very impressive tangle of PVC!) Seawater was actually pumping into Shallows 4 by Christmas!
Three 3-hp Jacuzzi pumps draw water from the lagoon in front of the wetlab through a common uptake manifold to 3" outflow pipes over the 1000 gal settling tank in Shallows 4
Three smaller 3/4-hp Jacuzzi pumps send seawater from Shallows 4 to the various tanks
Seawater lines plumbed to the tanks - Bill had seawater running to the first 10 tanks New Years Eve 2008!! More tanks will soon be on-line and ready to fill.
Cleaning old Shallows 5 took a solid week, with help from several of the Marathon Lab staff. Three years of post-Wilma muck and debris had to be shoveled out. Major cracks were patched, old marcite chipped away and removed. A 2" trash pump sucked out the last of the sludge from the pit.
January 16, 2009 we had water running through the entire system... 
....overflowing into the large Shallows (formerly Shallows 5).
A variety of odd critters have already made it their home!
