I was going through my books this morning, trying to track down a factoid about sponges, and then kind of snapped. It was as if each book was written by someone on a different planet. So I stopped reading and started writing a diatribe. Sorry folks.
Ever since I was made foster parent to a bunch of filter feeding organisms when my rock arrived a few years ago, I have been struggling with how to care for them. Tubeworms, bivalves, sponges, and the like (note: this sentence no verb). There is really no specific information out there, and what there is conflicts.
It is really hard to know how to deal with a lot of these guys. Are you succeeding or are they slowly starving to death? They can take months or years to die, so survival isn't much of a clue. Growth and spreading are good indicators, but can also take a long time to see.
One example: Turkey wing arks. They are the bivalves that a lot of people get on TBS live rock. I have to do some serious hunting to find out what they eat, and how often to feed them. Ask an average reefer, they'll say "DTs." Unfortunately, at the time I was figuring this out, DTs was only nanochloropsis, which was too small for them to eat, so I had to order bags of stuff from Reed Mariculture (since then, DTs has added larger species to their product). Allright, arks are kind of boring and ugly, but the same principles apply to flame scallops and more attractive bivalves.
By the way, the Reed Mariculture site is one of the best sources of info for feeding bivalves. They have to be, they're selling products to people who are making a living rearing bivalves.
Another one: sponges. There are a lot of experts saying things that completely conflict. Toonen says red balls are great, Fenner says they have a dismal survival record. Again, it's just hard to know. After my TBS rock arrived, it took almost a year for many of the sponges to finally die off, and they often looked pretty good in the meantime. The good news was that several of them found places they liked and started to grow again. At least I think they are the same species. Identifying sponges is yet another challenge.
I guess the point is that, as far as I can tell, there is still more religion than science in the keeping of these creatures. If you try them, keep an eye out for growth, rather than simply survival. At some point, someone will have used well-controlled experiments to figure out the requirements for these species. Meantime, be skeptical of what you hear, even from the "experts."
Ever since I was made foster parent to a bunch of filter feeding organisms when my rock arrived a few years ago, I have been struggling with how to care for them. Tubeworms, bivalves, sponges, and the like (note: this sentence no verb). There is really no specific information out there, and what there is conflicts.
It is really hard to know how to deal with a lot of these guys. Are you succeeding or are they slowly starving to death? They can take months or years to die, so survival isn't much of a clue. Growth and spreading are good indicators, but can also take a long time to see.
One example: Turkey wing arks. They are the bivalves that a lot of people get on TBS live rock. I have to do some serious hunting to find out what they eat, and how often to feed them. Ask an average reefer, they'll say "DTs." Unfortunately, at the time I was figuring this out, DTs was only nanochloropsis, which was too small for them to eat, so I had to order bags of stuff from Reed Mariculture (since then, DTs has added larger species to their product). Allright, arks are kind of boring and ugly, but the same principles apply to flame scallops and more attractive bivalves.
By the way, the Reed Mariculture site is one of the best sources of info for feeding bivalves. They have to be, they're selling products to people who are making a living rearing bivalves.
Another one: sponges. There are a lot of experts saying things that completely conflict. Toonen says red balls are great, Fenner says they have a dismal survival record. Again, it's just hard to know. After my TBS rock arrived, it took almost a year for many of the sponges to finally die off, and they often looked pretty good in the meantime. The good news was that several of them found places they liked and started to grow again. At least I think they are the same species. Identifying sponges is yet another challenge.
I guess the point is that, as far as I can tell, there is still more religion than science in the keeping of these creatures. If you try them, keep an eye out for growth, rather than simply survival. At some point, someone will have used well-controlled experiments to figure out the requirements for these species. Meantime, be skeptical of what you hear, even from the "experts."
