sponge withering away...

[manfx]

So about 9 months ago I got a small blue sponge and I put it in my reef tank.... it bloomed and spread nicely. I just noticed tonight that most of it has withered away to what can only be described as dried up vegetation. Everything in my tank is doing awesome.

Here is some of what is in my tank:
Mushrooms, ricordea, gsp, yellow star polyps, stunner chalice, montipora, leather corals, bubble corals, button polyps, gorgonias, xenias, anemones

Sailing tang, pair of tomato clowns, couple damsels, sergeant majors ... a few serpent star fish, horse shoe crab, sand sifting starfish, goby , a bunch of snails and crabs.

The water levels are next to perfect except the ph is a little low at 7.9

Temp is steady at 78

Has anyone ever seen this? Everything is thriving! The tank is 90 with a 30 gal sump/refugium with macro, dsb and live rock... I run my skimmer every few days and feed phytoplankton , coral food, frozen mysis , pellets n flakes....

I tried to upload a pic but this tablet took it too big ... I'll resize n post

 

[manfx]

The pic

 

[MARINECRITTERS]

Not enough food, your water is too clean. Sponges feed on enzymes phytoplankton and certain bacteria, they feed on extremely fine foods. Your sponge bloomed as you had a nutrient spike, it is common with new tanks.
If you plan on keeping sponges you must feed daily. I have my dosing pump putting over 300ml of live phytoplankton in my tank each day. It gets very costly if you do not culture your own food.

 

[manfx]

Awesome, thanks for answering. Looks like I'm going to have to culture my own phytoplankton

 

[MARINECRITTERS]

Awesome, thanks for answering. Looks like I'm going to have to culture my own phytoplankton

Make sure you do research on it, use proper fertilizer and a good live starter culture.

 

[manfx]

Make sure you do research on it, use proper fertilizer and a good live starter culture.

ive been reading like a mad man... dont think ill be able to- my other half wont like the mad scientist contraptions lol think ill just have to buy more already cultured phyto...

 

[SantaMonica]

Changing powerhead directions can also cause less food to go to get to the sponge.

As for feeding, I've found that dosing vinegar (with no skimmer) really made yellow sponge take off. Stopped the dosing, and the sponge receded to about half its area.

 

[MarineSniper]

ive been reading like a mad man... dont think ill be able to- my other half wont like the mad scientist contraptions lol think ill just have to buy more already cultured phyto...

You can culture 4 liters a week in a 5g bucket with nothing more than 2 air pumps and a light. Really not that hard to do: that's how I have mine set up now. In the basement and no one sees or knows it's there!

 

[manfx]

hey so guys im really considering doing the phyto cultivation but im curious, how do you know if it "crashes"?

 

[MARINECRITTERS]

hey so guys im really considering doing the phyto cultivation but im curious, how do you know if it "crashes"?

It stops getting darker, eventually turns into a brownish muck, to keep that from happening, split the culture every week.

 

[Allmost]

but are the phyto we culture small enough for the sponges to take up ?


it might be a good Idea to even culture cyano bacteria ! they have smaller size and .. .

 

[MARINECRITTERS]

The smallest species I have been able to culture is nannchloris, while I do not know it's exact size I have compared it with bacterias on my microscope and it seems to be about the same size.
So yes much of the phytoplankton that can be cultured is small enough for a sponge.

 

[Allmost]

Nannochloropsis is about 2-4 Microns.

check this page :
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1773991&page=41

specially posts from Gresham and Jenz and others .... seems like cyano is much better taken up !

but again, there are no studies showing azoox corals can digest nano. but again, there are none that say they cant

 

[MarineSniper]

The easiest and most common phyto is nanochloropsis. I'm culturing it and have had almost no problems with it. You can tell if it crashes if the phyto turns a yellowish color with clumps floating around in it. I've had a culture that refused to darken up and I was sure it had crashed. A friend of mine who's been culturing it for years advised me to wait, that it just happens sometimes, and sure enough; it came out fine, 17 days! later. Only happened once, however

I found the reason I was having some cultures crash was the bottles. I was removing half the culture and replacing it with new water and fertilizer. There's often enough of a film left on the bottle to block the light needed to grow out. I now drain all and use clean bottles each time and have had no more issues with any crashing. For lighting, I use the same bulbs as I do in my fuges. They're the screw in fluorescent ones they sell in the Wal Mart pet section. They have 4 fluorescent tubes, produce almost no ambient heat and grow phyto and macro great

 

[Mischke]

Not enough food, your water is too clean. Sponges feed on enzymes phytoplankton and certain bacteria, they feed on extremely fine foods. Your sponge bloomed as you had a nutrient spike, it is common with new tanks.
If you plan on keeping sponges you must feed daily. I have my dosing pump putting over 300ml of live phytoplankton in my tank each day. It gets very costly if you do not culture your own food.

How large is your tank?

 

[MARINECRITTERS]

I have revised things slightly, I am now dosing one litre of phyto a day into my 60 gallon reef tank, The sump it goes into slowly disperses it into the water column.