I am getting this sponge. Any advice on acclimation, placement?

[Koty]

I am getting this sponge. Any advice on acclimation, placement, and feeding?

 

[Fish Fan]

#reefsquad can anyone help?

 

[tbrown]

@danieyella

 

[tbrown]

Only sponge I've ever purposely kept was a Black Liver Sponge. That's in low light - full shade in a back corner of my tank. My experience with yellow/tan, at the least the one I had, grew fast and would kill corals when it got too close to them. There's a 1000 different yellow and tan sponges though, so color means very little.

If that's a Liver Sponge, medium low light makes them grow fuller, lower light makes them grow more "leggy", at least in my limited experience.

If it's a cryptic sponge, the less light the better I believe.

 

[Subsea]

I am getting this sponge. Any advice on acclimation, placement, and feeding?

With more than 10K species of sponges, it’s complicated. Who is the vendor and what name do they call it? Latin name?

 

[tbrown]

With more than 10K species of sponges, it’s complicated. Who is the vendor and what name do they call it? Latin name?

I'm guessing based on the photo it's most likely coming from a hobbyist rather than a vendor, but who knows.

 

[Koty]

It’s from a guy who just opened a new LFS. He had it at home in the sump in the dark for about 2 years. I guess it qualifies as a cryptic sponge. It is now in the sump in the dark with decent flow from the outputs of the UV and the chiller.

 

[tbrown]

Usually the best way to figure out care requirements is to ask the person you're buying it from how long they've had it and where it's been in their tank and try to match those parameters as closely as possible and then acclimate them to where you want to place them.

 

[Koty]

I did

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

I'm sorry I don't have time to organize this better, but for the short version compiled from my other posts:

ISpeakForTheSeas said:
For the super brief explanation, you need the right foods in relatively large quantities, the right flow, and the right elements:

Food/feeding:
-Isochrysis galbana (T-Iso) or a blend of phyto containing it is a good idea.
-Bacteria, Cyanobacteria, Dissolved Organic Matter (DOM), Particulate Organic Matter (POM), possibly Diatoms, etc. are good food for sponges, so things like stirring the sandbed and basting waste off of the rocks in the tank with the sponge may be helpful (I know this may not be possible depending on the tank, but finding ways to get bacteria into the water for the sponge to filter is a good idea).

Your sponges probably won't feed on Reef Roids, as the food in Reef Roids is too big (I've seen it stated at 150-200 microns, most of the food consumed by sponges is DOM, which is smaller than 1 micron; even the larger foods like the T-Iso are only like 6 microns at the largest).

Most sponges that I’ve looked into primarily consume Dissolved Organic Matter (DOM - sometimes called Dissolved Organic Carbon, or DOC, which is actually a component of DOM) and specific kinds of bacteria (which kinds vary at least a little from one sponge to another). Most of them seem to have no preference for where their DOC comes from, but they have a preference for algal-derived Dissolved Organic Nitrogen (i.e. DON produced by algae). Giant Barrel Sponges and some Boring Sponges have had their diets analyzed, and they primarily consume DOM (~80% of their total diet, with the remaining ~20% coming from Particulate Organic Matter (POM - primarily phytoplankton and bacteria, though, as mentioned above, bacteria is taken in much higher quantities than phyto). This ratio of approximately 80/20 seems to be pretty typical(though it can vary from what I've seen by +/-15% or so one way or another) for most sponges from what I can find.

Flow (and Light):
I recommend reading both quotes below for flow.

If you do some reading on sponge keeping here on R2R, you'll probably find pretty quickly that most people recommend low lighting low flow for sponges (exceptions for photosynthetic sponges), but the truth is this also depends on the sponge species. The most common photosynthetic sponges in the hobby are the photosynthetic plating sponges (like you can find/buy on LiveAquaria's site), but there are quite a few other sponges that are photosynthetic too (such as Aplysina cauliformis, for example), and these would benefit from high lighting. Similarly, some species of sponge do best in very high flow areas, including high flow areas with laminar flow (a lot of people talk about random flow on the site, which would be called turbulent flow, as they're trying to get the water moving basically randomly throughout the tank - laminar flow is just a continuous flow that doesn't change, so the water keeps going the same direction nonstop and there's nothing random about it). If you're not sure if the sponge is photosynthetic or not, you can try starting it in one lighting (such as low lighting), see how it does and then compare it to a different lighting (moderate or high) and figure out its needs from that. Same with the flow. Light will probably be the most important part for photosynthetic species and the food/flow the most important for NPS species - some people have found stirring up their sand to be an effective food source for sponges, likely because it puts bacteria and DOM into the water column. It’s probably safest to start low light/flow and move up, rather than starting high and moving lower.

Should you decide to try and keep any of the sponges you're interested in, take note if you can of the sponge's surroundings and the flow it's in - if you can't do that, the link below may help you figure out sediment and flow preferences for any sponges you want to keep (the graphical abstract close to the top is a visual representation of the info presented). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X21004714

Elements:
Basically, most sponges need silicates, and many need other elements that we don't often test for in tanks - I've heard of people having good anecdotal success with dosing ChaetoGro, so I'd probably recommend that at this point for meeting the other elemental needs of the sponges.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/h...doing-well-suggestions.1001212/#post-11638198

For the long but probably more helpful version:

For keeping sponges, I'd suggest reading through the following threads (and any links to other threads in my posts in them):
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/sponge-tank.1039472/https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/how-hard-easy-to-grow-sponge.1031659/https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/is-this-ball-sponge-a-goner.1036957/

 

[Koty]

Thanks a lot. I think my tank has what it takes as it is on the “dirty” side. I have a lot of algea including cyano. I have my Chaeto refuge before the sponges. I dose Tropic Marin A & K but I think it does not contain Si. Some of my sand is quartz sand so it may be a source.

 

[Subsea]

Thanks a lot. I think my tank has what it takes as it is on the “dirty” side. I have a lot of algea including cyano. I have my Chaeto refuge before the sponges. I dose Tropic Marin A & K but I think it does not contain Si. Some of my sand is quartz sand so it may be a source.

Cryptic sponges need silica, DOC and POC (Particulate Organic Carbon, which consist of micro fauna & fana, which includes bacteria).

Not so sure that sponges prefer dead bugs to live bugs considering that UV sterilizer is in front of sponges.

Dissolving quartz sand requires very low pH. I suggest you dose silicates.

While not familiar with names, in my systems, cryptic sponges proliferate in both unlit refugium and dark side of rocks in the display. The ornamental sponges that I keep require high flow.

The last picture shows dual 55G tanks. Bottom tank is seaweed propagation tank using vertical loop current. Top tank is seaweed & sponge tank.