Ode to The Sponge

[Subsea]

Of all reef invertebrate, the sponge was least understood by me. In Anthony Calfo / Charles Delbric book “Reef Invertebrae” a whole chapter of 50 pages is focused on > 7000 species that have been identified with diverse feeding habits.

All of the sponges in my reef tanks come from Gulf Coast EcoSystem. This morning the diver owner shared some information about how he collects them & maintains them in holding sumps with high flow. The Gulf of Mexico is high nutrient which is petfect sponge food. Water temperature today in Tarpon Springs is 58 degrees, too cold for the diver but good sponge weather. Warm temperatures are detrimental too sponges. Russ collects sponges between 25’ - 45’ with unlimited visibility off the Coast of Tarpon Springs, the home of the Greek “sponge fleet”.

I had previously only maintained sponges in 25 year mature 75G Jaubert Peum with Cryptic refugium & mud filter for recycling nutrients into live food for filter feeders.

Two month mature 20G high has been fast tracked into being a high nutrient lagoon filter feeding tank. It is designated to be set up in high school aquatic science class. We will set up two tanks at school. This reef tank and a 55G glas tank with a biotheme of Texas Gulf Coast EcoSystem tank and a collection field trip scheduled to fill it up. I hope this develops into a mentor program with substance for high school juniors.

 

[VR28man]

What do you find needs to be done to have success with Russ’ sponges?

 

[chris85]

Where are you going collecting? If y'all come down here i would be more than happy to show you around and help collect.

 

[Subsea]

Where are you going collecting? If y'all come down here i would be more than happy to show you around and help collect.

Thank you for tour guide offer. Forty years ago, I lived in Kema for 4 years. I often collected at the Galveston jetties for peppermints & condalacta anemones. Also caught green mollies & sheepshead minnows as well as ghost shrimp.

I don’t know when the schoolfield trip will happen, but I will keep your invite in mind. I most likely will go to Corpus Christie. There is an existing mariculture facility associated with Texas A & M in operation using algae filtration to clean up intensive shrimp cultivation ponds.

 

[Subsea]

What do you find needs to be done to have success with Russ’ sponges?

Feed a lot. Circulate a lot.

With respect to feeding a lot, when I feed heavy, it’s not just for the fish. I use diverse food webs to recycle nutrients thru sandbed detrivores to feed the tank live food.

http://chucksaddiction.thefishestate.net/cleanupcrew.html

After you get some background info, we can talk more.

 

[chris85]

Thank you for tour guide offer. Forty years ago, I lived in Kema for 4 years. I often collected at the Galveston jetties for peppermints & condalacta anemones. Also caught green mollies & sheepshead minnows as well as ghost shrimp.

I don’t know when the schoolfield trip will happen, but I will keep your invite in mind. I most likely will go to Corpus Christie. There is an existing mariculture facility associated with Texas A & M in operation using algae filtration to clean up intensive shrimp cultivation ponds.

Yeah we talked a little on pauls article.

I have caught some crazy stuff over the years!!
https://marsh-reef.org/index.php?posts/487596/
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/collection-trip.430348/

I have bred a few species from here also with my system. I didn't have to do much....really just put the breeders up top and babies came out the bottom.

If you don't mind me asking.... Where did you get the condys from?

What is the shrimp stock of the ponds? I really think aquaculture needs to get away from monoculture and use more organisms to clean the water. Are they using biofloc? I will be putting my seaweed back online this year... so hopefully all goes well.

The offer is on the table to come collect and for a school project I will collect and someone can come pick it up.

Do you know much about seagrass? Sorry I will pm you later....On with the thread!!

 

[Subsea]

Due to aquascaping, the water is cloudy. I just added Gracilaria Hayi from a production grow out tank. Along with the macro came good hitch hikers: micro stars & bristle worms.

 

[Subsea]

Yeah we talked a little on pauls article.

I have caught some crazy stuff over the years!!
https://marsh-reef.org/index.php?posts/487596/
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/collection-trip.430348/

I have bred a few species from here also with my system. I didn't have to do much....really just put the breeders up top and babies came out the bottom.

If you don't mind me asking.... Where did you get the condys from?

What is the shrimp stock of the ponds? I really think aquaculture needs to get away from monoculture and use more organisms to clean the water. Are they using biofloc? I will be putting my seaweed back online this year... so hopefully all goes well.

The offer is on the table to come collect and for a school project I will collect and someone can come pick it up.

Do you know much about seagrass? Sorry I will pm you later....On with the thread!!

Information exchanged is good. The Ode to Sponge is an introduction to biofiltration within the coral holobiont. It’s complex and it gets deep fast, but we will shine the light on complex food webs.

Seagrasses are more difficult than seaweeds. I will link you a thread with a seaweed guru.
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2678002

No bioflock in commercial shrimp raising. This is another thread, at a later date, on intensive shrimp cultivation at home.

To limit aquifer water usage, I am permitted as a zero discharge facility. All intensive land aquaculture should be a better steward of our water resources and learn algae & bacteria filtration and reuse water.

 

[Subsea]

Food webs feed the ocean on a macro level. While at that link, I found this. Algae is the beginning of the food web. Bacteria move > 60% of reef carbon up the food chain.

[Some phytoplankton are bacteria and others are protists. Two important types of phytoplankton that are diatoms and dinoflagellates. In coastal regions of the ocean, algae, such as kelps and rockweeds, and plants, such as sea grasses, are important primary producers.]

https://oceantracks.org/library/general-ecology/energy-and-food-webs

 

[Subsea]

Red tree sponge in 25 year mature tank. Tank is in first half of dark cycle with red light spillover from 4000 GPHr high energy acrylic HOB refugium with 300W Mars Hdro growlight.


https://www.live-plants.com/redfingersponge.htm

 

[chris85]

So how do you achieve 0 discharge? What all is going through the system(macro,fish,inverts, etc)? Could you give us a run down on your system?

Is there a link to the a&m reasearch?

If you are going to get to that..... Just tell me to sit back and wait!!

 

[Subsea]

Ode to Condy

So how do you achieve 0 discharge? What all is going through the system(macro,fish,inverts, etc)? Could you give us a run down on your system?

Is there a link to the a&m reasearch?

If you are going to get to that..... Just tell me to sit back and wait!!

Patience is a virtue.

With respect to my 10,oooG greenhous system, I shut it down when eletric bill > $1000. I have some amateur AQR facility tour on

http://www.aquacultureranch.com/Videos


Texas AgriLife Research
Maraculture Lab at Flour Bluff
Tzachi M Samocha
Reagents Fellow & Professor

A personal note about Tzachi. He retired from academia 18 months ago and has written a book on zero discharge intensive shrimp culture as a mom & pop facility. He was born in Israel and during the 7 Day War he comanded the tank column that was the “tip of spear” that outflanked the Egyptian armor and won the war.

http://www.shrimpnews.com/FreeRepor.../TzachSamochasBookOnBioflocShrimpFarming.html

 

[Subsea]

Ode to Condy

Night fishing on the Galveston jetties was a blast. In addition to speckled trout & flounder, condy anemone and peppermint shrimp were abundant.

I had first seen Condy anemone in a Galveston pet shop. The ones I had seen were blue, red and green. I asked the LFS owner where did he get these colorful anemone. I was led to a utility room with three 10G tanks colored blue, red and green each with dozens of anemone soaking up blue, red & green food dye. I was shocked at this and asked how long does the color stay bright. When he said a week, I asked him what he did about dissatisfied customers. He said they could buy another bright one for 50% off, if they brought the dull one back. I found that very interesting and it hatched a business idea for me.

Sell coral rubble as a pod condo, when pod populations are reduced bring the depleted condo back and exchange for a rejuvenated pod condo.

PS. @Scrubber_steve and @lapin
You helped me package a version of this with 7 count knitting sheets. Sandwich Ulva between sheets held together with fishing line for thread. Because the Ulva is grown in zooplankton reactor, it has an abundance of amphipods & copepods.

 

[lapin]

hahahahahahahahahhahaa

 

[chris85]

Thanks, bud Patience is definitely a virtue!! When it comes to nature....it is something that I am very passionate about and do what I can when I can to help out.

So why do we try for 0 discharge? Why can't we have a facility that produces cleaner water than when it comes in? This is something I have been working on for the last couple of years and have had promising results. Any thought on that?

My avatar is one of the local nems from here. I have found five species of nems here....never a condy!! I guess I will have to look harder.

For the pods, I use a corrugated plastic yard sign cut them into 5x5 squares, zip tie about four or five together and stash them in the rocks for a month or so.

Thanks for the videos, but I have watched all of them about ten times. You are part of the reason that I started working with macro and seagrasses. Will you be making any more videos. Maybe some how to's or tips and tricks for macro and stuff?

 

[chris85]

And night fishing is still a blast!!

 

[Subsea]

Yeah we talked a little on pauls article.

I have caught some crazy stuff over the years!!
https://marsh-reef.org/index.php?posts/487596/
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/collection-trip.430348/

I have bred a few species from here also with my system. I didn't have to do much....really just put the breeders up top and babies came out the bottom.

If you don't mind me asking.... Where did you get the condys from?

What is the shrimp stock of the ponds? I really think aquaculture needs to get away from monoculture and use more organisms to clean the water. Are they using biofloc? I will be putting my seaweed back online this year... so hopefully all goes well.

The offer is on the table to come collect and for a school project I will collect and someone can come pick it up.

Do you know much about seagrass? Sorry I will pm you later....On with the thread!!

@chris85
With respect to responsible stewardship of the water resources & the enviroment, I will highlight three cases to illustrate what I have seen: two in Texas and the other case study was at Fort Poke near my residence for 25 years. I was introduced to a family cousin that had more degrees than a thermometer. As a GS 17 he was Head of Army Core of Engineers.

As advanced infantry war games were going on the landscape, bacteria on a hillside were eating hydrocarbons from motor pool sluge pits. On the bottom of the hill was a 5 acre pond that was pristine.

In 1974 when I received my Marine Engineering Bacelor of Science sheepskin, my first job was with
Dow Chemical in Freeport, Texas. As a development engineer in training, I was allowed access to ongoing
Research & Deveopment. I was first assigned to Salt Grass Power Plant at Surfside Beach. Cromate as a heavy metal was the predominate corrosion inhibitor to protect heat exchanger metal surfaces used in industry. Dow recognized the need to get away from heavy metals and choose Salt Grass Power Plant a 300MW combined cycle gas turbine with waste heat recovery boilers used to drive steam turbines as the Pride of the Dow Fleet, Dow Plant operators were union workers and they did not like the “school boy” making extra work for them. Treatment with cromate was forgiving. If you put to much, it worked better and the algecide killed bacterial slimes that impede heat exchange. Even if concentration of cromate in water went low, the cromate that was already deposited to protect metal from salt water remained in place. At that time, coordinated phosphate scale was the acceptable method of replacement of cromate. It was a delicate balance that required finesse in understanding chemistry & physics and union operators did not want to be bothered with more work. I was given a 6’ by 10’ box on a skid for my office. It was big enough for two chairs and a desk. 1/3 of my desk was occupied by a 10G aquarium. I went native and set up a brackish water lagoon tank with grasses and minnows from the marsh land that received our discharge water. For cooling water, Dow built a 50 mile aquaduct to the Brasos River, as we used evaporative cooling which increased salinity to 4 cycles of concentration as our operating parameters. When aquarium was stocked with green mollies and grass shrimp, I gradually replaced marsh water with discharge water from the power plant. Now, the operators were vested into taking responsibility for understanding our environmental responsibilities. When I left Dow Chemical, that 10G aquarium was emulated in the board room by the CEO.

Before interviewing with Dow, I visited a high school friend from Lafayette, La. Frank was a commercial photographer in Houston for five years. When I told him about going to Freeport to interview with Dow for an Enviromental Engineering job and I had ethical concerns with their waste discharge. Frank told me of a situation spanning his 5 year career in the Houston area near the Gulf Coast estuaries called marshland. Montasanta had a plant with some nasty stuff in containment ponds that were triple sealed to prevent leaching out. Frank was allowed to see all three containment ponds at 10 acres each. The first overflowed into the second pond then second pond overflowed into the third pond which then overflowed into the marshland. The first pond was a graveyard with dead birds scattered about. The second pond was covered with blue green Cynobacteria and brine shrimp eating Cynobacteria. The third pond was a gorgeous natural lagoon which became a showpiece for that enviromental group.

 

[Subsea]

So why do we try for 0 discharge? Why can't we have a facility that produces cleaner water than when it comes in? This is something I have been working on for the last couple of years and have had promising results. Any thought on that?

@chris85
Don’t mix apples & oranges.

In my application as a grow out facility, I use the least amount of water for a commercial operation. Most importantly, the aquatic livestock I grow in the Hill Country must not enter the fresh water ecosystems. We don’t need more tallow trees, juniper ash trees or water hyacinth invasion.

With a Class 5 Certification in Municipal Waste Water Treatment, I have been bonified to be a S.H.I.T.
consultant.

For the beneficial reuse of water:
Oxidation Ponds do that with bacteria. Water Hyacinth do that with algae filtration.

 

[Subsea]

Thanks, bud Patience is definitely a virtue!! When it comes to nature....it is something that I am very passionate about and do what I can when I can to help out.

So why do we try for 0 discharge? Why can't we have a facility that produces cleaner water than when it comes in? This is something I have been working on for the last couple of years and have had promising results. Any thought on that?

My avatar is one of the local nems from here. I have found five species of nems here....never a condy!! I guess I will have to look harder.

For the pods, I use a corrugated plastic yard sign cut them into 5x5 squares, zip tie about four or five together and stash them in the rocks for a month or so.

Thanks for the videos, but I have watched all of them about ten times. You are part of the reason that I started working with macro and seagrasses. Will you be making any more videos. Maybe some how to's or tips and tricks for macro and stuff?

[For the pods, I use a corrugated plastic yard sign cut them into 5x5 squares, zip tie about four or five together and stash them in the rocks for a month or so.]

Great idea. @Paul B uses old tires in Long Island Sound. While he is at it, he grabs a bucket of
marsh mud. It is better than miracle mud.

 

[chris85]

I'm sorry bud, I guess I should have clarified!! I didn't specifically mean your system, but a system that has access to nsw and that produces local animals or even something like a shrimp farm.