Dosing silicate to encourage sponge growth?

[biophilia]

Hi all. Just wondering if anyone else out there is dosing silicate in an attempt to encourage the growth of sponges for biological filtration? I’m interested in hearing about any observations (positive or negative) over the long term since I just began experimenting with it.

I started looking into Si dosing after reading about the role of sponges in wild reefs and decided to give it a go after I came across an article on the topic by Randy Holmes Farley. I’ve been dosing to maintain ~.08-1ppm for two weeks now and have noticed a near doubling of the sponge mass in the benthic areas of my rockwork. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes that the growth was so pronounced when I checked with a flashlight last night. Surprisingly, I’ve not seen any diatom blooms despite my initial fears — and algae dust on my glass seems to be about half what it was before I started dosing. I know this is just anecdotal evidence, but it seems promising!

 

[Flippers4pups]

Hi all. Just wondering if anyone else out there is dosing silicate in an attempt to encourage the growth of sponges for biological filtration? I’m interested in hearing about any observations (positive or negative) over the long term since I just began experimenting with it.

I started looking into Si dosing after reading about the role of sponges in wild reefs and decided to give it a go after I came across an article on the topic by Randy Holmes Farley. I’ve been dosing to maintain ~.08-1ppm for two weeks now and have noticed a near doubling of the sponge mass in the benthic areas of my rockwork. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes that the growth was so pronounced when I checked with a flashlight last night. Surprisingly, I’ve not seen any diatom blooms despite my initial fears — and algae dust on my glass seems to be about half what it was before I started dosing. I know this is just anecdotal evidence, but it seems promising!

@Randy Holmes-Farley has in the past with his tanks and is very knowledgeable on this.

 

[norfolkgarden]

Hi all. Just wondering if anyone else out there is dosing silicate in an attempt to encourage the growth of sponges for biological filtration? I’m interested in hearing about any observations (positive or negative) over the long term since I just began experimenting with it.

I started looking into Si dosing after reading about the role of sponges in wild reefs and decided to give it a go after I came across an article on the topic by Randy Holmes Farley. I’ve been dosing to maintain ~.08-1ppm for two weeks now and have noticed a near doubling of the sponge mass in the benthic areas of my rockwork. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes that the growth was so pronounced when I checked with a flashlight last night. Surprisingly, I’ve not seen any diatom blooms despite my initial fears — and algae dust on my glass seems to be about half what it was before I started dosing. I know this is just anecdotal evidence, but it seems promising!

Was wondering if you are still dosing and how it has worked out?

Thanks!

 

[Muttley000]

What test kit are people using for this fine a measurement?

 

[Flippers4pups]

What test kit are people using for this fine a measurement?

Salifert makes one.

 

[Muttley000]

Salifert makes one.

Thanks, I have a cryptic fuge in a hundred gallon Rubbermaid trough and have been thinking about monitoring this!

 

[Flippers4pups]

Thanks, I have a cryptic fuge in a hundred gallon Rubbermaid trough and have been thinking about monitoring this!

Do you have sponge growth down there?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Do keep in mind, not all sponges have silicate skeletons.

Some user info
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/dosing-silicates.177080/

 

[Muttley000]

Do you have sponge growth down there?

Not anything noticable. It's been running a year with slow flow and I keep it totally dark with a styrofoam sheet. I looked in there today for the first time in months and couldn't detect any difference in the size of the round sponges that were already on the live rock pieces I put in there

 

[biophilia]

Was wondering if you are still dosing and how it has worked out?

Thanks!

I'm am still dosing sodium silicate. I add it to my kalk dosing container so a small amount of Si gets automatically added every hour. I'm not adding a lot currently (roughly +0.75 ppm Si per week). I continue to see a slow but consistent increase in sponge growth in the dark areas. I'm not sure whether it's because of the silica specifically or simply because I feed a lot and dose a carbon source. Most of the sponges in my tank are small white sycon sponges that (at least as far as I know) build their structure from calcium carbonate rather than silica.

More than anything, I'm continuing to dose it because the tiny dusting of diatoms it fuels effectively out-competes some other more problematic algae species (like dinoflagellates and cyano)... and are also a good food source for my snails! My glass is also easier to clean because the light brown dusting that appears every 3 or 4 days wipes right off -- whereas the green film algae it replaced required more scraping. I used to get cyano on my powerhead, but haven't seen a speck of it since I started Si dosing.

 

[biophilia]

Not a lot of room for algae to take hold because I have a coral hoarding problem, but as you can see the visible algae that is growing is primarily coralline in spite of the Si...

 

[shred5]

I'm am still dosing sodium silicate. I add it to my kalk dosing container so a small amount of Si gets automatically added every hour. I'm not adding a lot currently (roughly +0.75 ppm Si per week). I continue to see a slow but consistent increase in sponge growth in the dark areas. I'm not sure whether it's because of the silica specifically or simply because I feed a lot and dose a carbon source. Most of the sponges in my tank are small white sycon sponges that (at least as far as I know) build their structure from calcium carbonate rather than silica.

More than anything, I'm continuing to dose it because the tiny dusting of diatoms it fuels effectively out-competes some other more problematic algae species (like dinoflagellates and cyano)... and are also a good food source for my snails! My glass is also easier to clean because the light brown dusting that appears every 3 or 4 days wipes right off -- whereas the green film algae it replaced required more scraping. I used to get cyano on my powerhead, but haven't seen a speck of it since I started Si dosing.

Never thought of adding it to my top off water. I have been dosing it manually for years in my sponge tank.

 

[norfolkgarden]

Not a lot of room for algae to take hold because I have a coral hoarding problem, but as you can see the visible algae that is growing is primarily coralline in spite of the Si...

WOW!

That is a beautiful tank!