How do I take care of this sponge?

TOURKID

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I got a blue sponge for a birthday present. It came from bali.

I was told it is photosinthic....

Low light or high light? low flow or high flow?
Any supplimental feedings?

How long should I expect it to last? Its beautiful, but I always assumed that sponges were hard to care for...
Thanks for any info!!
Maggie
 
There is essentially no way to know the care requirements of sponges unless you know what kind of environment they came from. They're almost impossible to identify, and even if you could there isn't much info on their life histories.

Your best bet is to try different placements and see what works. I would work off of the assumption that it's photosynthetic for starters. If it starts to develop dark spots cut them off and try a different placement.
 
Some leads for you for starters: try Image search on Haliclona blue sponge, it would be my best guess, and some links, mentioning it in the tanks: Wetweb on sponges, should be high light, another similar thread, one more, sponges care, incl. Haliclona.

I had one, bought with whitish dead spots, expected it to recover, like it was said in one of the articles, that sponges can regrow after being chopped almost to a few cells size... Didn't happen. Continued to die in days. When had nothing to lose, in ~3 days, removed it from the tank,without exposing to air, cut off the dead area, placed in hospital tank. I could see, that the bigger channels in the dead area were clogged by aragonite sand - and I was extremely cautious, not to let this happen.

I don't know, are they toxic, when dying or not - opinions differ, but have a strong suspicion, that it started the tank crash. Sea stars, slugs, cucumbers, sps and most of fish were affected most, but crustaceans, softies and LPS - not.

Not much help, but you can start the search from here.
Best of luck!
 
Maybe we could do like that old experiment, and blend them, sift them through cheesecloth to remove the skeleton, and let the individual cells recolonize where they want to live.
 
Based on my experience, that species loves lots of light.

Per plate CO1(24) of Tyree's The Porifera (Living Sponges)
the species is Haliclona.

If you feed you tank lots of DT, the sponges should grow.

Best of luck,

Roy
 

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