View Full Version : sponges
fisharades
11-26-2003, 5:16 PM
is it possible to purchase live sponge for your home aquarium?
fisharades
11-26-2003, 5:30 PM
also, will a moorish idol(sorry about all of the moorish idol questions-just curious) eat live sponge in your aquarium, or does it have to be dead? I know sponge is one of their primary foods, but I am not really content with the foods at my LFS that just have a little bit of sponge mixed in them; they dont seem to help. For a while now i have believed that we can maybe get moorish idols to live longer if we give the right type-and the right amount-of sponge. I really dont want to purchase a moorish idol,because i dont want the poor guy dying in 6 months - 1 year, but i do want to know if it would help if we fed them the appropriate type of sponge.
My LFS has sponges for sale from time to time - usually blue or orange. My live rock came with a lot of sponges too - mostly white and yellow...cool stuff!
Chase
11-27-2003, 12:39 AM
I have several live sponges in my reef tank. They have been very healthy for about 9 months so far but I'm afraid I can't offer any detail about the species. I bought them because they were attached to the same rock as some corals that I wanted. I half expected to have to clean dead sponges a few days later but they survived and are in good shape. Just be sure that you NEVER expose them to air - NEVER.
lebloom
11-27-2003, 9:02 AM
What does it Take to raise the sponge?
mogurnda
11-28-2003, 7:59 AM
Sponges are very diverse group of suspension feeders, living on phytoplankton, bacteria and debris, mostly. Some species are photosynthetic, but you rarely (never?) see them for sale. I got several as hitchhikers on my live rock, and they have done well with whatever comes in with fish food, plus occasional additions of phytoplankton, like DTs, Tahitian Blend of Reed's Post-Set formula. Some have grown and spread over the years, others have simply stayed put.
As far as Moorish Idols (and almost all nudibranchs, for that matter), sponge-eaters are generally specialized for a particular species of sponge, and will choose to starve rather than eat the wrong species. You then have to face the problem that the food species is usually not known, and you can't obtain the correct species even if you knew what it was.