Man, the tank and inhabitants are looking fantastic.
Interesting.Just saw a guy post this device he setup in his DT for clown fry he expects to hatch tonight. I'm curious to see how his attempt at raising fry from the DT goes. It's not cheap but the design is interesting.
Fry Tumbler | The Polyp Pros
This is our Magnetic Fry Tumbler for glass up to 16mm thick. The purpose of this design is for all you clownfish breeders. The tumbler runs on an air driven flow (air pump not included) that gently pushes flow through the tumbler in a circular motion. The flow then escapes out of a removable...www.thepolyppros.co.uk
From what I've over the years cryptic sponges are ubiquitous in reef systems. When ever I've moved or reaquascaped a system there have been cryptic sponges. Steve Tyree started promoting them for filtration back in the '90s. It's de Goeig's work that showed how essential they are for corals and the food webs in reef ecosystems One of de Goeig's discoveries was at least some of these cryptic sponges have a mitosis rate of just 6-8 hours. But instead of growing at some phenominal rate, they are shedding huge amounts of cellular detritus rich in nutrients back into the ecosystem. This process of converting DOC into particulate detritus explains why coral aren't killed in short order by algae scrubers or by adding DOC to promote bacterial growth to be removed by skimmers.
Personally I think they are good filter feeders.
@Dustin07 It's almost certainly a sponge. There's several different species that will show up in systems that are white. Steve Tyree championed sponges back in the 90's and he almost seems prescient now that we know how critical they are for a healthy reef ecosystem. Work done by researchers show most sponges primarily feed on the DOC that is produced in reef system and some cryptic sponges can remove it 1000X faster than the bacteria in the water column (of which only a subset is removed by skimmers so they are only skewing the microbiomes to unnatural microbial counts). To reiterate my previous posts (#302 & #303), DOC is directly implicated in coral decline and causes both chronic and acute issues with corals. By very quickly converting DOC to Particulate Organic Carbon, POC, sponges are feeding the complex food webs that exist in reef ecosystems and removing compounds detrimental to corals.
Is there a point where you just cut them out when growing too wildly? I've seen people say they intentionally dose with silicates to increase sponge growth, but I've also see people post pictures of what appear to be sponges, overtaking small colonies such as zoanthids... the one that appeared on my rock (I still need to take a picture) seems to have slowed growth, if that's what it is. . . .
They are removing DOC at a phenominal rate and dumping nutrient rich detrituys back into teh food webs very quickly. Removing a lot of sponge at one time would likely disrupt the food webs in a system as well as make a lot of DOC that is potentially detrimental for corals readily available. As far as dosing with silcates I would want to see some research since many papers show sponges feed primarily on DOC. As there is research that sponges process "good" DOC differently than "bad" DOC there's also the question whether if grwoing more sponge than would occur incidentally with the existing food webs would be a good thing or bad thing. What is the right balance for the ecosystem and corals to thrive? Taking a cue from the problems arising from industrialized farming practices, just becaus we know how to grow something faster doesn't mean it's a good thing if we can't do it sustainably and end up sterilizing farmland.
While they don't have dosage amounts for Reef Fusion, BRS has some Reef Calculators on their site that have worked great for me over the years. But, I use their supplements.
Like I said, it doesn't give a dosage for Reef Fusion so, if it's concentrated differently that the products listed, the dosage amount may be off.