Sponge ID and Propagation

Did you do all the cutting and attaching underwater?

Dianatabor, I believe that the long filaments or tunnels take water to the center.  I think you will have better luck if you place a small rock next to the colony of sponge and let it grow onto the small rock.  Then gently cut the tie between the main colony and the small rock.  Give it a try and let us know how it goes.  As a side note, I am under the impression that sponges are non-photosynthetic.  If you look behind your rock formation, you will probably see a lot of sponge growing in little or no light at all.  I could be wrong though, this has just been my experience.

I took your advice and placed a rock next to some of the filaments and presto!! The sponge is attaching very well! The 2" rock has only been there for about a week and a half. Cool! Now I can add this same sponge to my new 10 gallon tank at work.

Thanks for your advice!

Mark - When I first started my tank back in August, one of my live rocks had a small piece of Halimeda attached. Since then, it's grown incredibly well. I keep breaking off clumps and placing them in the back of my tank behind my live rock. I really like the green color, but try not to let it compete with my corals.

Since my tank is small and Halimeda's a rigid macro algae, I do use pieces of it as a barrier between corals that end up battling. I have a piece on both sides of my frogspawn, separating it from my torch coral and a nice red mushroom that it kept burning. I also have a piece between an anemone and SPS coral, just in case. It works great to keep things in their own territory.   

No matter what I do, that stuff just keeps growing. My tank usually has high normal calcium levels, so I haven't really worried about having so much; however, I think I am to the point where I should probably bring some baggies of it to the meeting and give some away. If anyone out there wants a clump, just let me know.

So, Mark, why do you ask? Is this a difficult macro algae to keep?

Mark, that's right! I do believe it is near impossible to set up a Ca Reactor without a pH meter. Maybe once they get going you can not use it but if they get out of whach, then your tank is toast. A lot of people will use kalkwasser in addition to a Ca Reactor. Aside from just adding Ca, kalkwasser also helps precipitate phosphate out and any extra carbon dioxide from the reactor that gets into your main tank will react with the hydroxide ions in the kalkwasser and not lower your pH.

Mark Peterson wrote: Using Halimeda like you do is like sending kids to separate rooms to keep them from fighting. You are ingenious.

Better than letting your kids fight until one of them kills the other. I'm just being resourceful, using what I have... a small 17 gallon tank full of wonderful soft corals that just keep growing and a nice supply of Halimeda. I have very limited space, so I do what I have to. There are only so many places to move things in a tank that small. The frogspawn and torch coral didn't start out next to each other. The frogspawn quickly outgrew it's original spot, even after fragging it, so I had to move it. I rearrange as necessary, and I think my tank looks fab (I'll have to post full tank pics). Aren't we all just making it up as we go anyway?

As for your questions, my substrate is Aragalive Figi Pink mixed with CaribSea Aragonite Bermuda Pink. I also added a handful of small pearlized spiral shells, which disolve over time. I'm not sure what kind of live rock I have, so I'm not sure if that contributes to the calcium level. I have a 10" oyster zig-zag (not live, just thick connected shells) that may also add small amounts of calcium to the water. (I'll have to take a picture to explain.)

To maintain calcium, pH, and alkalinity, I use a combination of HBH Balance Blocks and very small amounts of Kent Marine PH-Buffer, only as needed. After much experimentation, I am able to keep my calcium in the mid 400's with minimal effort. When I was first using the Balance Blocks, I placed them in an area of medium flow, which caused them to disolve too quickly. My calcium reached a high of 570 and my alkalinity was on the low end. Oops! When that happened, I used small amounts of Kent Marine Superbuffer-dKH and did water changes until levels normalized over a few weeks. I abandoned them completely for a while, then started experimenting with them again, since I still had a whole package left. I now place a half block in a medium-low flow area and wait about a week after the block is completely (slowly) disolved before adding the next.

I'm sure this is where the debate begins. Believe me, I've read all of the positive and negative comments on Reef Central regarding Balance Blocks, but they appear work well for me, so I've chosen to go with them. All of my corals and invertebrates look healthy and continue to grow, so I must be doing something right.

BTW - On the package, I noticed that Balance Blocks are made by HBH Enterprises in Springville, UT. (FYI - You can click on Products --> Marine to read briefly about Balance Blocks.) Anyone know these guys?

Edited by dianatabor

Y'all are fantastic. I think it's so cool to have these kind of informative discussions and see your success.

Additives require work that I'd rather avoid!

I have used Kalkwasser, buffers and some prepared additives but probably not continuously for very long. I even tried CaribSea Aragamilk for a few months. I hope it doesn't seem like I am against additives. I'm just "lazy"...looking for ways to set up the tank so that additives are optional.

I like "low-tech", more natural ways to setup a tank. That's why I tried the Plenum/NNR method in 1995, the RDP Refugia/Algae Scrubber in 1998, the Sponge Refugia in 2000 and the Oolitic DSB with Utah Rock in 2002.

It appears that every two years, I choose to move on to trying and promoting the next "improvement". Of late my kick is heavier feeding. I figure that heavy feeding isn't a problem because we have to feed anyway and I like the way that nature puts chemicals together as food. And who doesn't appreciate the cook!

Edited by Mark Peterson

Since this is the sponge topic lsit, I'd like to introduce myself and ask a question.  If you want to skip my intro and brief  ;-)  history, scroll down to the line of asterisks.

My Name is Trevis and I live in W. Jordan.  I am the proud new owner of a 2 yr old 120 gal Tenecor acrylic tank with Simplicty Plus filter system.  It originally contained 60 lbs of lace rock and 4 fish (yellow tail damsel, juv. french angel, sailfin tang, and flame angel) with a crushed coral substrate and simple 48" actinic lights; no coral, no inverts, no crustaceans, and very little algea.  I moved the whole tank to my house, keeping everything but the lace rock, and added in 120 lbs of pre-prepared live rock that liverocknreef.com in west valley had shipped in for me from Florida.  (BTW, Bill was great to work with.  He typically does internet business but, if you live within 30 miles of his warehouse in WVC, he'll deliver it to your door for free! No Shipping! And he gave me a bunch of 10%-off cards if you're looking to buy.) I added the rock, tested Nitrate, Nitrite, Ammonia, Phosphate, Calcium, Alk, and hardness levels after the change (I kept all the water, with the exception of a 20 gal water change since it was due) and everything looked good but the phospates.  I started with Phosguard and Phos-Lok and it's steadily coming down.  I treated the tank with Bacter-vital daily for 2 weeks per Bill's suggestion.  Twice a week I test the water and add super-buffer, kalkwasser, Reef-Vital DNA, and whatever else it needs.  I've had it 5 weeks now and have done 3 water changes of 20 gal each (I'll explain why later).

Here's my tank with lights off.  I haven't figured out how to take a nice lights-on pic yet.

The live rock came with TONS of Cor. Algea in purple, green, maroon, light-red, and bright orange.  It also had several plants, about 30 cockels, and one pretty red sponge.  On day 2, I noticed that the Sailfin tang had hole-in-head and started treating right away.  Melafix stopped the erosion and kept out further infection.  Metrozole capsules didn't seem to change anything.  One of those medications killed every cockel, mollusk, and clam on the live-rock.  I spent alot of time pulling those things out.  Here's a pic of the hole-in-head:

I contacted the guy at the office I bought it from and learned that these fish were rarely fed greens; mostly just mysis shrimp and flake food.  Hoping that the hole-in-head was caused by lack of veggies, I started soaking all of his food in Kent Zoe and feeding him green seaweed and lettuce/spinach.  They love veggies!

Soon after acquiring the tank, I decided to make some seemingly necessary upgrades.  I got a new 48" 260w Power Compact unit off E-bay for $140 and added fans to the sides of the hood for ventilation (the Odyssea unit I bought runs Hot!)  I'll post pics of the DIY job I did retro-fitting it into the acrylic black hood in the appropriate topic  list.  I also added an 18-watt Turbo-Twist UV light filter with a Rio 400 and the water clarity improved drastically.  Those 2 changes have made all the difference.  The new lights bring out colors in the rock and fish that I never knew were there!  They also made the copapods visible on the tank walls.  Through a jeweler's loop, they're very colorful!

The tank is 30" tall, 18" deep, and 48" wide, so it was meant to be a fish display tank.  With the new lights, I'm seeing great green algea growth all over the tank, not too much, but an increase over the slim-to-none that was there before.  The plants that came in on the live rock are doing well too, in-spite of the angels munching. There's no brown algea at all.  I added 25 cleaning crabs and a lawnmower blenny to keep the place clean.  I also added a chocolate chip starfish for looks.

But, newbies will learn from mistakes and here's what I learned.  In trying to lower the phosphates and heal the sailfin, I did a water change 2 weeks ago and put a few more gallons in than I took out.  Those extra gallons went into the reef-plus system in the back and submerged the previously drip-fed bioballs, causing them to release all of their green-slime micro algea into the water.  I didn't notice the water level in the back before, so I didn't know the difference.  The next day, my wter was a green cloud, so thick I could see from one end to the other.  The fish were fine, but it looked ugly.  After consulting a friend who'd seen this reef type before (apparently they're not very common), I syphoned 3 gallons ot of the back reef and did another water change (the 2nd in a week).  FYI, the water level in the back should be between 5 and 9 inches deep.  To see the reef type I'm talking about, see below or goto tenecor.com/filtration.php.

This is the structure built into the back of the tank.  It's about 4 inches deep and 44 inches wide, leaving 2 inches to the wall on both sides.  With the extra 3-5 gallons, my water level in this back sump area was more than half-way to the top.  I like the design since there's no external plumbing and therefore no chance of flooding a lower refugium or sump.  I just didn't take note of the tank's working parameters before fiddling with it, and I payed the price.

The water is crystal-clear now and all of the element levels are ideal in the aquarium, except for phospates.  That's steadily coming down as I change out the Phos-guard every 4 days.  I attribute the clarity to cleaning my micron filter daily, adding the Turbo-twist UV filter, dropping the sump level back to normal so the Bioballs can regrow micro, and adding the pricey but effective Coralife Marine Tank Clarifier as prescribed.

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Now for my sponge related question:

Here's a pic of the sponge, which was round and plump when it came in on the rock, but shriveled up when I started adding melafix and metrozole.  I ran out of melafix a few days ago and it's starting to regain shape and it's bright-red color, but today it spewed out a white fleshy substance from the hole in the tip(see pic).  The fish won't eat the white stuff, and never bothered the sponge to begin with.  The stuff resembles crustacean flesh; stringy and a milky color.  Can anyone tell me what kind of sponge it is and what it's doing?

Amonia is 0, PH is 8, Alk is 15, calcium is 450, Nitrates and nitrates read "safe" on the test strips I use, and phosphates are higher than they should be, but coming down.

I've been reading the site for about 3 months now and I'm way impressed at the knowlege floating around here.  Your site was very helpful is deciding what changes to make and species to plan for/buy.  I hope someone can help me with this question.  Info on sponges is hard to find, probably because there are so many types.  And, though I didn't pay for it, I'd like to save it.  It's a pretty red contrast to the other coraline algea colors in the tank. Plus, of you look closely at the base, you'll see an off-shoot that was doing well when it arrived. 

In the near future, once the phosphate leves are acceptable, I'll add a purple tang, a juv. emperor, and 3 or 4 soft corals.  I hope that I can keep the angels well enough fed that they'll leave the alone.  They've not been near any coral for over 2 years now.  Maybe they forgot how to eat them. One can hope.  The CCS will probably have to go then too.  For now, I'm really enjoying what I have!

Thanks for the info.  As of today, the white stuff is gone and the hole in the tip is clear.  The color is really coming back into this thing.  I hope it survives.