Where is all the info on sponges at?

[burgundy]

I've been looking thru youtube for a while trying to find any sponge care guides, and more recently thru the forums. I've yet to see anything, what's with the lack of general care guides for sponges?

I hate asking such a question as I believe everyone should do research but here I am

 

[Paul B]

What are you looking for. I probably have 10lbs of sponges in my tank

 

[burgundy]

What are you looking for. I probably have 10lbs of sponges in my tank

Looking to have a orange finger sponge, I'm just curious to what their requirements are, and if you can propagate them in some capacity.

 

[sixty_reefer]

That’s a good article for you to look at if you considering sponges

Silica In Reef Aquariums

Why would I recommend dosing silica? Largely because creatures in our tanks use it, the concentrations in our tanks (at least in mine) are below natural levels, and the sponges, mollusks, and diatoms may not be getting enough to thrive.

reefs.com

 

[Paul B]

Yes you can but sponges filter a lot of water so your tank can't be to clean or new. I feed a lot of clams so the sponges grow like crazy on the excess clam juice.
You can cut almost any sponge and stick it to something for it to grow there.

Sponges for aquarium can be called all sorts of names, but the true, orange finger sponge comes from Alaska to Northern California so would need colder water than a reef.

 

[burgundy]

thank you paul and sixty

 

[Daniel@R2R Verified Admin]

@Paul B has forgotten more about reefing than I'll ever know, so I'm glad he's in here. @najer is someone I think would be great for this conversation too.

 

[najer]

Paul is your man with experience, be sure of your source and the shipping trail, if they have been exposed to air at some point they will almost certainly die.
As mentioned also you need some form of available food, live phyto is what mine get and for a lot of sponges anything over 5 micron is too big, the "holes" are an exhaust as the food is extracted by the tiny openings in the body filtering water.
Due to the water flow required do not have direct flow at the opening, a cross flow helps draw water through.

 

[Paul B]

@Paul B has forgotten more about reefing than I'll ever know,

What did you say? I forgot.

 

[Paul B]

All exposed surfaces in my 6' reef are covered in sponge. Excellent water conditioners and will grow depending on the microscope food available but I never directly feed them.
They will clear my tank of cloudy clam juice in minutes.
This is an encrusting photosynthetic sponge (I forgot the name.)

 

[Daniel@R2R Verified Admin]

Thanks to this thread, now I'm considering adding sponges to my reef...

 

[andrewkw]

For the most part IMO sponges are another thing that just happen in a reef. Most times you don't buy them or add them deliberately they just happen. I would guess I have 10-20 different types of sponges in my reefs and only one of them I purchased. The first picture is of a blue sponge. In fact there was a time where having sponge growth was considered an indicator that your system was stable and mature. More recently people have come to think of them as annoyances or even pests. Then of course you have people that will scrape them off their rocks only to purchase identical ones later.. Jake Adams is one person who is always talking about how you should remove them. They can and will overgrow corals. One coral I neglected was an elegance that had a black sponge eventually almost completely grow over it. By the time I got around to removing it, it was too late.

Having sponges in your system would show that they can survive and or thrive in your system. Most of the time in my personal experience they are slow growing. They also don't have an issue being out of the water. I have another piece of that blue sponge that was out of the water maybe 20-30 minutes last week when I was fixing a rock that fell over. I actually recall buying it maybe 6 or 7 years ago asking the guy at the store to be careful and he told me that they are fine exposed to water. Not really sure where this idea started but I have been hearing it for years. Likely there are some species of sponge that cannot be exposed to water but for the most part that is not true.

Some are photosynthetic or at least partially photosynthetic where as some are not. In my overflow / sump and other areas that get very little ambient light sponges grow. While I have never personally tried target feeding them @Dr. Dendrostein is probably a good person to ask about this. Their diet may be similar to some NPS corals with very small mouths.

The only sponge I've ever really had trouble with are those red and white aussie sponges with the gorgonian growing on them. Of course it's been many many years since I tried keeping those, so perhaps they would do okay now. You don't really see them for sale much anymore but when Australia was new giant colonies were constantly coming in. They are still available from time to time.

The first couple pictures are in my display (lights off) the rest are from my frag tank sump.

 

[Paul B]

Sponges through the back of my tank. All the spaces under my rock is filled with them and above the rock are blue photosynthetic sponges. I didn't buy any of them, they just grew.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

For the most part IMO sponges are another thing that just happen in a reef. Most times you don't buy them or add them deliberately they just happen. I would guess I have 10-20 different types of sponges in my reefs and only one of them I purchased. The first picture is of a blue sponge. In fact there was a time where having sponge growth was considered an indicator that your system was stable and mature. More recently people have come to think of them as annoyances or even pests. Then of course you have people that will scrape them off their rocks only to purchase identical ones later.. Jake Adams is one person who is always talking about how you should remove them. They can and will overgrow corals. One coral I neglected was an elegance that had a black sponge eventually almost completely grow over it. By the time I got around to removing it, it was too late.

Having sponges in your system would show that they can survive and or thrive in your system. Most of the time in my personal experience they are slow growing. They also don't have an issue being out of the water. I have another piece of that blue sponge that was out of the water maybe 20-30 minutes last week when I was fixing a rock that fell over. I actually recall buying it maybe 6 or 7 years ago asking the guy at the store to be careful and he told me that they are fine exposed to water. Not really sure where this idea started but I have been hearing it for years. Likely there are some species of sponge that cannot be exposed to water but for the most part that is not true.

Some are photosynthetic or at least partially photosynthetic where as some are not. In my overflow / sump and other areas that get very little ambient light sponges grow. While I have never personally tried target feeding them @Dr. Dendrostein is probably a good person to ask about this. Their diet may be similar to some NPS corals with very small mouths.

The only sponge I've ever really had trouble with are those red and white aussie sponges with the gorgonian growing on them. Of course it's been many many years since I tried keeping those, so perhaps they would do okay now. You don't really see them for sale much anymore but when Australia was new giant colonies were constantly coming in. They are still available from time to time.

The first couple pictures are in my display (lights off) the rest are from my frag tank sump.

I've only kept one type of sponge like a bright orange, I believe they call it bread crumb. NPS sponge, I have one and I think it's over a year now. Might have grown a little bit but I don't keep an eye on it to know. I get sponges from time to time , come on rocks with my corals and so they survive for a while. But that's about it

 

[KenO]

KP Aquatics out of Florida sells all types of sponges. I recently setup a cryptic zone in a 40 breeder attached to my my sump. I started dosing sodium silicate (liquid glass) that Randy’s article talks about. The cryptic zone has been setup for a month or so. There were some small sponges that had started growing on their own. Now with the addition of the silica, all of them have grown in size. I’ve only been dosing the silica for about a week.

 

[burgundy]

@KenO does it matter what type of soluble silica is used? also what do you personally use?

 

[jda]

Go to wet web media and read about them. Real live rock used to come full of the seeds and stuff and they would grow like crazy, especially in the dark and low-light spots. The are not as common with people starting sterile tanks.

 

[KenO]

@KenO does it matter what type of soluble silica is used? also what do you personally use?

This is what I ordered. As per Randy a 40% solution is what you need.
Also as per Randy. Just make sure you weigh the liquid glass vs measuring it.

If you add 50 grams of 40% to 400 mL (final concentration is about 20 grams per 435 mL (46 mg/mL) and then dose 71 mL of that solution (3266 mg sodium silicate) to 600 gallons (2271 L), the sodium silicate dosed is 1.4 mg/L. Of that, about half of that weight is "SiO2", so about 0.7 ppm SiO2 equivalents.

Fortunately, dose is very noncritical. If you dose X amount, in a few days, you might be at less than a quarter that amount left.

 

[KenO]

Go to wet web media and read about them. Real live rock used to come full of the seeds and stuff and they would grow like crazy, especially in the dark and low-light spots. The are not as common with people starting sterile tanks.

I had about 20 lbs of LR from KP aquatics, so I am hoping it will seed my cryptic zone. When I first received the rock it had all types of sponges on it. In addition I have some small clams/scallops that seem to be multiplying in my cryptic zone. I also dose phytoplankton that I culture myself.

 

[burgundy]

@KenO thank you, yeah the article said you really can't overdose but I suppose too much of anything is bad, most if not all of the silica is used up within 4 days.