Sponge ID?

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

Good or bad? After reading @Paul B ‘s experience with a sponge that took over his tank, I saw this and was like dang… I took this rock out of my display. When I had it stock tank while I was consolidating my systems, I accidentally put this on top of a large snail. The snail died and this sponge grew out of the shell and all over the rock. There was not great water flow where it was. Now, whatever this rock touches, this sponge grows on it. I’m really clearly that I am going to wake up one day and have 400 gallons of great stuff… lol

 

[Subsea]

Sponges come in all shapes and colors. I am not sure what I am looking at on your different pictures.

Would you post a close up with white light?

I keep many ornamental & cryptic sponges from the Caribbean.

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

The one of it in my display by the coral is simply the rock that other rock was touching. Just showing it there also. But these are close ups.

 

[Subsea]

Looks more like nuisance opportunistic algae

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

It’s unlike any algae I have ever seen. I’ll take the rock out of the tank and get detailed pics.

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

Photos attached

 

[Subsea]

https://www.reef2reef.com/attachments/img_6201-jpeg.4005514/

I am familiar with Caribbean ornamental sponges as well as cryptic sponges. Your picture doesn’t look like any sponges that I have seen. However, there are more than 10K species of sponges identified; no telling how many unidentified species.

It doesn’t look very attractive, how does it respond to a peroxide toothbrushing?

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

It pulls off easy in chunks. But there is a residual left. I didn’t about the peroxide. So bizarre.

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

@Paul B - I read something you wrote about something you dealt with once that you introduced to your tank and it took over.

When I consolidating my systems down I placed them in a 150G stock tank as a holding container for 4 months. Unbeknownst to me, when I stacked this rock up, there was a giant snail that I wedged under it. It eventually died. There also wasn’t great water flow underneath this rock. Months later when I noticed a growth underneath this rock, the growth had completed taken over the entire void of space between the rocks where the snail shell was. Easily two softballs in mass would be the area this growth took up.

Now, any rock I have leaned this one up against , this growth now exists on that other rock. No matter how much of it I am able to pull off, it comes back. I’m going to try F Aiptasia on two spots of one rock. I noticed recently that I now have this growth on one of my very large Zoa colony’s and it has started to choke out some of the zoas, maybe 20%. I’m at a point where I think I am going to have to pull all the rocks in question and isolate them in a quarantine tank for fear of spreading this. It’s not like it is spreading fast. But, if I pull a small patch that might be growing by itself. In a weeks time it’s back to the exact size it was prior to me pulling it. It’s just not noticeably taking up additional real estate yet.

Is this something you have encountered before? How do I figure out what it is? How it got here and more importantly, how do I prevent the blob from taking over my movie theater? :)

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

@Randy Holmes-Farley have you ever seen anything like this?

I’ve grown concerned after discovering last night it has moved into my larger Zoa colony’s (about 1 sq foot in size). I’ve been noticing Zoa heads floating randomly in the water column. I’ve increased flow again, so I just assumed it was that. Well, I am sure the flow helped but this growth is literally squeezing the zoas off the rock like you would squeeze a pea out of its pod…

 

[AquaNomad]

Although my tank is only 5 months old, I have a rock that I inherited that appears to have sponges that look very similar to yours. They are starting to crop up all over the place. I’m curious if I need to implement some control measure to limit the spread.

 

[Weaverjay101]

Photos attached

Would you be interested in selling some of this sponge? I'm very interested in keeping sponges.

 

[90addict]

@WhatCouldGoWrong71 does it look something like this? I have this sponge starting to really take off out of nowhere! It's starting to creep around a zoa colony and looks like the long strings will attach to the next rock and spread again. Today I pulled some out and put under a microscope but not sure I can post that video

 

[90addict]

Screenshot of video

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

The color and the verbal yes. Mine does grow sprouts, but no where near like your spaghetti hell.

 

[Ohmegg]

This is really fascinating