Are you sponge worthy? :)

Randy Holmes-Farley · Feb 14, 2016

saltyhog said:
I would love to have some sponges. I just thought they were almost impossible to keep. Is there any chance the purple one is this species? I took this picture in the Caribbean. Would love to be able to keep one of these. In person they are stunning.

The big ones are VERY hard to keep.

I've tried numerous times and some of them have been more successful since I started dosing vinegar (they may consume it and it drives bacteria), but the bigger ones are still not going to thrive much of the time.

The largest I have is a yellow ball sponge from Divers Den and it has grown to about fill and close off a cave it is in, but most folks just lose them.

Fin · Feb 14, 2016

Decades ago, during an aquarium club behind the scenes visit to the Houston Zoo Aquarium, we couldn't help notice the beautiful sponges that they had in their reef exhibit. Since we had no one in the club that had ever had any success with keeping sponges, we asked our tour guide what the secret to success was. The answer we got was not what we were expecting - "When they die, we get new ones."

Ezaudio2 · Feb 14, 2016

This is an interesting topic. I recently posted a thread in the inverts forum to try and I dentify a particular type of sponge my red linkias have been eating in my tank. I have several types of sponges in my system but they will only eat the red one. I also have a yellow ball sponge and one of the purple plating ones in this post. I purchased the purple one from a fellow reefer but the yellow and red sponges were hitch kickers that grew on their own. The yellow one has gotten quite big to the point where I have had to cut it several times. From my experience the yellow prefers as much light as possible but will also grow on the underside of frag plugs and rocks just not as colorful as when it's in direct light. I have also noticed that a carbon source like vinegar does help growth.

davocean · Feb 15, 2016

Ha, my old thread brought back to life!
To those Pming I'm in a new tank now, and I finally found this sponge again, but it is still new and not fragging at this time

saltyfilmfolks · Feb 15, 2016

Ezaudio2 said:
This is an interesting topic. I recently posted a thread in the inverts forum to try and I dentify a particular type of sponge my red linkias have been eating in my tank. I have several types of sponges in my system but they will only eat the red one. I also have a yellow ball sponge and one of the purple plating ones in this post. I purchased the purple one from a fellow reefer but the yellow and red sponges were hitch kickers that grew on their own. The yellow one has gotten quite big to the point where I have had to cut it several times. From my experience the yellow prefers as much light as possible but will also grow on the underside of frag plugs and rocks just not as colorful as when it's in direct light. I have also noticed that a carbon source like vinegar does help growth.

Wow. I thought I got good sponge growth! My recent 30g tank transfer resulted in(what I thought) was good sponge growth and tunicate growth. You got me beat by a mile!
My lil purple finally took off in the DT as well. Along with a few nice hitchhikers.

davocean said:
Ha, my old thread brought back to life!
To those Pming I'm in a new tank now, and I finally found this sponge again, but it is still new and not fragging at this time

Kinda neat when an old thread gets bumped. Folks looking for info. I assume you got a new Piece? Are people really pm-ing for a chunk? thats cool.

ESVAreefer · Feb 15, 2016

All the rocks not on the bottom in my tank have sponge under them. I have yellow, white, purple and I had blue but now I can't find it.... It was on a power head. They also like not having filter socks

davocean · Feb 15, 2016

saltyfilmfolks said:
Kinda neat when an old thread gets bumped. Folks looking for info. I assume you got a new Piece? Are people really pm-ing for a chunk? thats cool.

Oh yeah all good, miss that tank, nice to see the old pics.
I think when people discover the purple plating many go ape over it, super easy to grow, plates like a monti but does not encrust or anything, keeps purple color really easy, good low light/med light addition.

Ezaudio2 · Feb 15, 2016

If anyone has one like the red one I posted I would be interested in buying some for my linkias. The above pic was a before pic. This is what it looks like now.