orange sponge

[elaw62]

I've never tried to keep an ornamental sponge but purchased this one to try. I feed it phyto every third day after shutting off pumps & leave pumps off for 10 min.'s or so. I also feed the tank Rods original food every day. I have it located at bottom of tank in a relatively high flow area. Is there anything else I should be doing. Do I stand a chance in getting this to survive?

 

[Ron Reefman]

Some sponges do quite well in aquariums... typically the ones that grow under the rocks where you don't see them until you doing some rearanging. Pretty decorative sponges are much less likely to survive. I have one that is ordinary looking (tan) and grows in a ball and has been in my tank for a year and has grown some. I've just started tring to bring home a sponge from each snorkel trip in the Keys. The first one survived 12 weeks in the QT just fine, but it started to disappear when I moved it to the DT. After 3 months is almost gone. :angryfire:

According to Julian Sprung's book on inverts, some do well, others don't stand a chance, most appear to not be very hardy. Some have short life spans (months) and others live for years. Some like good flow, some don't. Some need light, some don't and some hate the light! Some aren't even reef safe and some are even toxic to fish (only a couple). The biggest problem as I see it, is that so many look so similar (even worse than corals) that it's hard to know what you really have. Good luck.

 

[awolusa]

I have the same one in the same conditions for about three monyhs now. It is doing great right now. Also have am Australian white lightning sponge that has started growing. Have had him about 18 months. I do not feed them but do add some filter feeder type food in the tank every week. I do keep my tank a little dirtier than most because I have a bunch of filter feeders. Sponges, sea apples feather dusters, etc

 

[Purple Rocks]

I own a Orange fan sponge, a bright blue sponge and pink golfball sponge all for about a year, i dont do any spot feeding and all of them have grown to 3 times there original size, i even propagated my blue one, and lives in a friends tank.

 

[r-balljunkie]

off topic, many divers use these orange sponges as a natural defogger on their masks. you'll see the orange sponge passed around before getting in the water

 

[Bugger]

silicate

 

[travis32]

I have orange sponge that I didn't buy that I found underneith my rocks when I tore down my tank and redid it. I hope it survived it was pretty awesome looking. I also had purple sponge growing on a coral. I'm not sure if that survived or not. I don't buy sponge. It needs dark, unlit places to grow, which means it's not visible. I put the rock that had the orange stuff in back in a dark place so the orange had the best chance of survival. I'll never see it again until I tear my rockwork down again.


It's awesome but, just not practical. I don't feed my sponge... It filters stuff out of the water.
I also have lots of yellow sponge all over. That is somewhat visible. It likes to grow at the base of my soft corals on rocks. Sometimes growing over some of the corals stems.

 

[salty joe]

i even propagated my blue one, and lives in a friends tank.

What was your method?

 

[Bretts05jeep]

This yellow sponge started as a spec on a rock of polyps. It has grown this big after about a year. The polyps have not grown, I think due to the sponge.