Newbie interested in NPS coral and filter feeders looking for advice

[shiningarmor377]

I'm currently in the process of setting up my first saltwater tank, a 75-gallon, and I've been doing research on what specifically I wanted to keep for about the last month. I find myself drawn to NPS corals like sun coral, gorgonians, and chili coral, as well as filter-feeding inverts like feather dusters and sponges. I'm aware that most of the species in this category are not recommended for beginners, with a decent portion being considered expert only, so I'm here to ask for any advice on how to set myself up for success in designing an NPS-dominated system as a beginner.

I had planned to start with some photosynthetic LPS corals while I learned the ropes, and set up a system with lower flow near the top for the LPS and stronger at the bottom for NPS and filters, but I worry that the aggressiveness of many LPS corals would cause me some issues, both because I would also like to keep lots of non-filter inverts, mainly shrimp, urchins, and sea slugs/cucumbers/nudibranch, and a clam, which could be hurt by the tentacles, and because a 75-gallon tank limits my space a bit more than I'd like.

I also considered going for a high-flow all-round system with some SPS near the top since that's typically what they prefer, but being so new I doubt my ability to balance nutrient and mineral levels such that the excess food required by filter feeders didn't kill the SPS through water quality and the SPS didn't suck up all my alkalinity and calcium, starving out my NPS. I also worry that flow that high would negatively impact the inverts I mentioned earlier.
,
any advice on how to set up a system like this or how to stay focused on what I'm most interested in without jumping in too far into the deep end and just killing a bunch of coral would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Cichlid Dad]

Welcome To The Reef!

IMHO, it will take a while to gain knowledge and learn your tank. I would suggest taking things slow and start with a few beginner coral. It will take time for your system to mature. The advanced coral are going to be harder to keep and may cause you to prematurity quite the hobby out of frustration.

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

I personally love NPS as well and have kept them before (as I currently do). Sun corals aren't hard to keep at all but you need to feed them at least every other day. Mysis has always been my go to. I spotfeed each head I can get to...an exceptionally difficult and slow growing species (but one I've kept and love) is the black sun coral Tubastrea micranthus. They're voracious eaters and grow extremely slowly. Fan worms like feather dusters really don't require any special care and I've even had one sprout out of nowhere from a live rock and grow to full size without any special care whatsoever. I'd stay away from chili corals and others like it because very, very few people can provide enough particulate food while also maintaining acceptable nitrate and phosphate levels. Gorgonians aren't too challenging and there are photosynthetic ones as well. Just know the vast majority of NPS grow extremely slow and need to be spotfed regularly.
I also have a filter feeding cucumber that I'll leave a pic of. He's beautiful and have had him for 6+ months. They don't seem to be demanding but I'm sure they appreciate the phyto dosing daily and broadcast feeding of Reef Roids once or twice a week. If you have any questions I'd love to hear them!

 

[Northwest_Scapes_]

As someone who's had an NPS dominate setup for a while, I'd definitely recommend starting with some easy photosynthetic corals and learning the ropes since it is a huge learning curve going from Photosynthetic to NPS so knowing the basics help a lot.
I'd say some of the "easier" NPS would be the LPS, most notably the Fathead Dendro. It's a really easy going NPS that usually a lot of reefers keep so there's a lot of knowledge about them compared to the rarer seafans and other obscure NPS that don't enter that hobby often. Fathead Dendros really only need to be fed every few days and that keeps them happy which makes them a great one to start out with since it helps you get used to manually feeding but it isn't a big pain since you don't need to feed them daily.
Heck even I forget to feed the tank sometimes and it did set me back a bit in the early days of the tank. If you have any more questions I'm happy to answer but those are just my initial thoughts

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

As someone who's had an NPS dominate setup for a while, I'd definitely recommend starting with some easy photosynthetic corals and learning the ropes since it is a huge learning curve going from Photosynthetic to NPS so knowing the basics help a lot.
I'd say some of the "easier" NPS would be the LPS, most notably the Fathead Dendro. It's a really easy going NPS that usually a lot of reefers keep so there's a lot of knowledge about them compared to the rarer seafans and other obscure NPS that don't enter that hobby often. Fathead Dendros really only need to be fed every few days and that keeps them happy which makes them a great one to start out with since it helps you get used to manually feeding but it isn't a big pain since you don't need to feed them daily.
Heck even I forget to feed the tank sometimes and it did set me back a bit in the early days of the tank. If you have any more questions I'm happy to answer but those are just my initial thoughts

You wouldn't consider your standard Tubastrea sun corals to be easy? They only need flow and to be fed regularly. I'd say they're pretty newbie friendly as well as feather dusters for sure.

 

[Northwest_Scapes_]

You wouldn't consider your standard Tubastrea sun corals to be easy? They only need flow and to be fed regularly. I'd say they're pretty newbie friendly as well as feather dusters for sure.

Oh yeah, I'd say the Pink Tubastrea are pretty beginner friendly (The black ones are a bit picky + there's a few other species that I haven't seen many people keep so I don't know too much about those ones)
My only thing about them is that Sun Corals prefer to have daily feedings. You can feed them every few days like the Dendros, but they'll be at their peak health if fed daily.
So Fathead Dendro and Sun Corals are definitely my recs for a "beginner friendly" NPS. If the Fathead Dendros aren't available where you live (I know in some European countries, you can't get them such as Geramny iirc) then Sun Corals are your next best since those are pretty much everywhere.

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

Oh yeah, I'd say the Pink Tubastrea are pretty beginner friendly (The black ones are a bit picky + there's a few other species that I haven't seen many people keep so I don't know too much about those ones)
My only thing about them is that Sun Corals prefer to have daily feedings. You can feed them every few days like the Dendros, but they'll be at their peak health if fed daily.
So Fathead Dendro and Sun Corals are definitely my recs for a "beginner friendly" NPS. If the Fathead Dendros aren't available where you live (I know in some European countries, you can't get them such as Geramny iirc) then Sun Corals are your next best since those are pretty much everywhere.

I'd assume OP could get em in Lexington (assuming he means Kentucky). I've loved my black sun corals but agree that they do need to be fed daily and not many beginners would be up for the task. They're very beautiful though and one of my all time favorite corals. If I'm not mistaken, they're the only member of Tubastrea with a branching growth form.which is part of why I love them. Ime they as well as other Tubastrea species aren't all that difficult to train to extend polyps during the day honestly.

 

[shiningarmor377]

Yeah, I'm in kentucky. appreciate the recommendations, I was planning to get a tubastrea as my first NPS after the tank had a few months to establish/stabilize, but I wasn't familiar with the fathead dendro, so I'll definitely be looking for one of those as well. has anybody with NPS-dominated systems had any success keeping decorative sponges? I'd really like to get one at some point once the tank is well-established, but I've heard exceedingly few success stories regarding their care.

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

Yeah, I'm in kentucky. appreciate the recommendations, I was planning to get a tubastrea as my first NPS after the tank had a few months to establish/stabilize, but I wasn't familiar with the fathead dendro, so I'll definitely be looking for one of those as well. has anybody with NPS-dominated systems had any success keeping decorative sponges? I'd really like to get one at some point once the tank is well-established, but I've heard exceedingly few success stories regarding their care.

I haven't kept sponges but from my experience working in an aquarium shop in America that I'm sure you'd recognize, I can tell you that Dendros are generally harder to find or more expensive than your typical Tubastrea species sun coral

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

As mentioned above, feather duster/fan worms seem to be the easiest to care for, then things like barnacles and a number of different bivalves (clams, mussels, oysters, etc. - some bivalves, such as flame scallops, seem to have very specific feeding needs, so I'd consider them more difficult); some people have had some success with NPS corals; sponges and certain specific NPS corals (like the chili corals mentioned above) seem to be the most difficult to keep long term, and I only know a couple of people who have had really any success with them at all.

For the easier care specimens like feather dusters and bivalves, you typically just need to position the specimen properly (meaning in an area with the right substrate, the right flow, sometimes the right lighting, etc.) and dose phytoplankton (from what I've seen, I'd recommend Isochrysis galbana [T-Iso], Chaetoceros sp. [and/or Thalassiosira sp.], and Tetraselmis sp. - a blend containing all of these with or without other phyto species would be ideal) in high enough quantities for them thrive. (I'd also put things like bryozoans in this category.)

For slightly more difficult specimens like barnacles and easier NPS corals, you need to position the specimen properly and feed meaty foods/pods (pods referring to copepods, rotifers, ostracods, amphipods, brine shrimp, etc.; basically any small, feeder crustacean) in high enough quantities for them thrive.

For difficult NPS corals, you need to position the specimen properly and feed some kind of meaty foods/pods (nobody seems to know exactly what meaty foods or pods though) in high enough quantities for them thrive. (I'd put NPS hydrocorals slightly below this category, but above the barnacles category at this point.)

For sponges, you need to position the specimen properly and feed the right kinds of foods in high enough quantities for them to survive (I don't know if I've heard of any non-invasive sponges actually thriving in a tank yet) - the main problem seems to be providing the right kinds of foods in sufficient quantities.

Long story short, the only "success" stories I've seen with sponges either come from labs (one of which was able to keep the sponges alive and healthy enough to reaggregate while also being somewhat unhealthy and clearly lacking in color by feeding a bunch of phyto while the sponges likely also fed on bacteria, cyano, and possibly diatoms in the tank; the other managed to keep a known invasive species of sponge alive in a similarly mildly healthy/unhealthy state, but I don't remember the methodology off the top of my head) or from people regularly stirring their sandbeds and/or blowing detritus off their rocks - this is thought to help get the bacteria, microalgae (phytoplankton and similar), and appropriately sized organic matter pieces from the sandbed/rocks into the water column for the sponges to feed on (these seem to have similar levels of success as the labs mentioned above, with periods of both sponge growth and sponge deterioration).

A massive sponge info dump (I’m sorry, it’s kind of daunting - I need to go through and organize/condense it one of these days):

The info I’ve compiled on sponges so far:

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.

Unfortunately, we don’t have an easy, hobbyist way to measure DOM, DOC, DON, or POM (or POC or PON) that I’m aware of, so we don't really have any way to determine if the sponges are getting enough food consistently to thrive (to say nothing of measuring the amounts of specific bacteria in our tanks), but there you have it.

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.

Some sponges do well in some tanks but not in others for no discernible reason, and some some sponges travel well while other sponges don't. Plus, sometimes a sponge will basically disintegrate into a ton of tiny pieces and look like it's dying, but it'll then proceed to grow and live on afterwards. Similarly, some sponges grow invasively while others grow incredibly slowly, so a lot of keeping these guys at this point really just depends on the luck of the draw (so to speak).

Just a note here, some species of sponge (such as some Sycon spp. - pineapple sponges) do in fact eat noteworthy (for the sponge, not necessarily for the tank they're in) levels of small phyto species.

The only real advice I can offer for sure for this specific sponge (Clathria (Clathria) prolifera) is that it eats Isochrysis galbana (T-Iso),* so offering it some regularly may prove beneficial. Beyond that, it grows on solid surfaces (like rocks, dock pilings, etc.), it is often found in the intertidal zone, and it's said that it can handle high brackish salinities (reportedly as low as 15ppt).

https://www.researchgate.net/public...ge_Clathria_prolifera_from_the_Chesapeake_Bay

To add to the above, knowing that bacteria and DOC are important, some people might recommend carbon dosing and/or turning off a UV if you have one running so as to encourage bacterial population growth (you may need to be careful if you try this though, as too big of a bacteria bloom could cause issues in your tank).

For general sponge health, I've heard good things from people dosing ChaetoGro, and some phyto dosing and/or macro in the tank may help encourage sponge health/growth too.

Also, a couple of things pertaining to sponges and silicates - most sponges do need them, so it may be a good idea (as mentioned) to dose silicates if you're trying to promote sponge growth.

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).

No taxonomy needed: Sponge functional morphologies inform about environmental conditions​

The need to study sponge communities in comparatively inaccessible habitats led to a sponge classification system that relies on the strictly function…

www.sciencedirect.com

Most sponges do, yes. If there’s a high level of silicates and a sufficient amount of food for the sponges (including things like Dissolved Organic Matter, bacteria, phytoplankton, and some Particulate Organic Matter), then you may see a population boom with sponges.

 

[shiningarmor377]

wow, thanks for all the info! Really unfortunate that we have so much trouble keeping these unique and interesting creatures in our tanks. All the info you've given me though in combination with the other research I've done on sponges makes me wonder if it would be possible to create a mixture of Chaetogro (or equivalent supplement formula), silicates, particularly small phyto species, dissolved cyanobacteria (and other bacteria species cultured from inside the tank), and detritus-heavy water (possibly from a gravel vac) to more reliably get sponges the food they need.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

wow, thanks for all the info! Really unfortunate that we have so much trouble keeping these unique and interesting creatures in our tanks. All the info you've given me though in combination with the other research I've done on sponges makes me wonder if it would be possible to create a mixture of Chaetogro (or equivalent supplement formula), silicates, particularly small phyto species, dissolved cyanobacteria (and other bacteria species cultured from inside the tank), and detritus-heavy water (possibly from a gravel vac) to more reliably get sponges the food they need.

It’s possible, but culturing the bacteria and such in sufficient quantities and consistencies would likely be incredibly difficult, as the populations would likely shift frequently (changing what bacteria is growing) and sponges are quite effective at filter feeding.

 

[dennis romano]

Sponges are extremely challenging especially to a new reefer with a relatively new tank. I have several sponges that are several years old and thriving. My oldest originally was a blue vase that shrank down to the size of a dime then overgrew a rock the size of a baseball. Lately, it has shrunk down again. It is around ten years old. The easiest for me have been red encrusting, ball sponges and frilly elephant ears. Mine are all over three years old. Forget the tree sponges. They are pretty much impossible. I really don't feed my sponges. My one tank is over twenty years old and I stir up the substrate to get the microfauna into the water column. They thrive in a gentle to moderate flow. Strong light is a killer. Algae forms on the sponges and must be brushed off. Chili corals are pretty sturdy. Mine is about five years old and doesn't look like much during the day, generally just lays there deflated. Every few days, it perks up and expands the polyps. You can try feather duster, Coco worms and Cerianthus anemones if you want other non photosynthetic critters.

 

[shiningarmor377]

Sponges are extremely challenging especially to a new reefer with a relatively new tank. I have several sponges that are several years old and thriving. My oldest originally was a blue vase that shrank down to the size of a dime then overgrew a rock the size of a baseball. Lately, it has shrunk down again. It is around ten years old. The easiest for me have been red encrusting, ball sponges and frilly elephant ears. Mine are all over three years old. Forget the tree sponges. They are pretty much impossible. I really don't feed my sponges. My one tank is over twenty years old and I stir up the substrate to get the microfauna into the water column. They thrive in a gentle to moderate flow. Strong light is a killer. Algae forms on the sponges and must be brushed off. Chili corals are pretty sturdy. Mine is about five years old and doesn't look like much during the day, generally just lays there deflated. Every few days, it perks up and expands the polyps. You can try feather duster, Coco worms and Cerianthus anemones if you want other non photosynthetic critters.

Do cerianthus anemones need a species-specific tank or can they thrive in a community reef tank? I'm planning to have a three-inch sandbed because I really like jawfish, but I've seen one or two places say cerianthus need a species-specific tank, although I'm not sure why.

 

[dennis romano]

Do cerianthus anemones need a species-specific tank or can they thrive in a community reef tank? I'm planning to have a three-inch sandbed because I really like jawfish, but I've seen one or two places say cerianthus need a species-specific tank, although I'm not sure why.

Never heard that they need a species specific tank. I have always kept them in mixed reefs. It is pretty cool watching the tentacles grab pieces of food as they float by.