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Sponge's are taking over! (1 Viewer)

BEAV9900

BEAV9900

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A while back I noticed a different sponge than I've commonly observed in my tank. After some searching I found the ID on melvs reef "pink sponge". It has taken over some rocks and my frag rack. I am attributing it to killing my GSP. Normally not a big deal, at least it took out a "cheap coral". I've now seen it around other corals and it looks like it started to take out some zoas. I dipped a zoa frag in hydrogen peroxide a few times over a week as a test, seemed to work but zoas haven't opened back up after the 3/4 dip. Tonight I noticed some AOG zoas closed up, sure enough pink sponge and about 10 asterina stars chomping on the zoas. Anyone else have issues with sponges overtaking coral? Ways to rid this pest? Air doesn't seem to kill it, I left a frag out for a few hours.

 
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The little pink ones, whites, ones, and orange ones. They are all over my tank but don't grow fast enough to ever be a problem and have never choked out or gave me any indication that was irritating coral. It will go through periods of growth then dieback.
 
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David Grigor said:
The little pink ones, whites, ones, and orange ones. They are all over my tank but don't grow fast enough to ever be a problem and have never choked out or gave me any indication that was irritating coral. It will go through periods of growth then dieback.
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Sponges are one of those things (like mini brittle stars) that come and go based on available nutrients in the water column. I agree with David, I've never had them bother anything, but I suppose if they got big enough they could. I have zoas just die off for no reason that I can find once a while, so maybe it is just that.
 
I really like those pink ones. I wish there were more of them in my tanks.
 
csb123 said:
I wonder if it some kind of tunicate.
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Tunicates, whether solitary species (which would have two openings per individual) or colonial species (which will have multiple individuals) will be more regular in form than sponges normally are. Also, tunicates will respond quickly to being touched by closing up and possibly retracing their incurrent and excurrent siphons.

If these actually are tunicates that are staying a live in aquaria long term, and possibly even reproducing, I'd love to get some for the lab. However, these look like sponges to me.
 
None of us have encountered every organism that might crop up in a reef tank, and there are lots of species of sponges. So your pink sponges could well be different from other people's pink colored sponges. But other than cases where they have simply overgrown corals, I've never seen cases where sponges seemed to be killing or otherwise harming corals.

Again, there are lots of species though, and most sponges have arsenals of protective toxic compounds in them (most organisms that are sessile and can't get up and walk away if danger approaches do have toxins for defense), so though I've never experienced this in my tanks myself I would not be too surprised if there are indeed some sponges that can harm neighboring corals.
 
I have the white and pink ones in my tank. White ones don't seem to bother anything.The pink sponge however is only on a single one of my Torch corals and that torch has been declining in health since. All other Euphyllia are doing great so I'm leaning towards the pink sponge (if that's what it is) being the culprit.
 
Fishfoo said:
I have the white and pink ones in my tank. White ones don't seem to bother anything.The pink sponge however is only on a single one of my Torch corals and that torch has been declining in health since. All other Euphyllia are doing great so I'm leaning towards the pink sponge (if that's what it is) being the culprit.
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Interesting. Corroborating evidence suggesting there could be a problem with this sponge. It could still be just a coincidence, but maybe there really is an issue here.
 


These sponge "shoots" have also popped up. From what I read the pink sponge sends these off as well. This is in my sump but I will see them in the display as well.
 
capman said:
Interesting. Corroborating evidence suggesting there could be a problem with this sponge. It could still be just a coincidence, but maybe there really is an issue here.
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Possibly! It was declining so fast that a few days ago I decided to take it out of the tank and put it in water I had just taken out from a water change. I then scrubbed the branches with a new toothbrush to get it all off and placed it back in the tank. I think one of the heads was too far gone already, but the other seems to be hanging in there. Time will tell. Planning on posting a thread on the things/problems I've been having in my tank within the next couple of days FWIW
 
BEAV9900 said:
you ask and you shall receive, when would you like me to drop them off?
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Well, pending more information on whether these do in fact cause problems for corals (above and beyond just problems from them overgrowing corals), maybe I should be careful what I wish for for the moment.
 
BEAV9900 said:


These sponge "shoots" have also popped up. From what I read the pink sponge sends these off as well. This is in my sump but I will see them in the display as well.
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In general, I'm always very happy to have an abundance of sponge growth. As I said, I normally don't see any problems from them unless they are overgrowing something, and that has been rare. In my case, sponges are part of the point of me keeping these tanks in the labs for teaching, but in general, I just think sponges are cool.
 
capman said:
In general, I'm always very happy to have an abundance of sponge growth. As I said, I normally don't see any problems from them unless they are overgrowing something, and that has been rare. In my case, sponges are part of the point of me keeping these tanks in the labs for teaching, but in general, I just think sponges are cool.
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I tend to agree with this. I have one rock that started in my old refugium but then i moved it up to my display. It has yellow, black, white, and purplish sponges growing on it. None of the pink mentioned before, its pretty cool and really like having it!
 
BEAV9900 said:
I tend to agree with this. I have one rock that started in my old refugium but then i moved it up to my display. It has yellow, black, white, and purplish sponges growing on it. None of the pink mentioned before, its pretty cool and really like having it!
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The black sponge... Is it the encrusting variety?
I picked up some of this black encrusting sponge from a frag years ago and it is not a good one to have around corals. It will grow onto the coral and smother the polyps underneath. The sponge pulls off rather easily, but it seems to leave just enough material behind to continue its slow path of destruction. The sponge prefers lower light levels so it's hard to find where you actually have it on the rocks. Once it gets established on a coral, it slowly chokes the coral out.
To remove the sponge from frags, I will pick off as much as I can before using an old toothbrush dipped in hydrogen peroxide on the sponge. If there's still remnants of the sponge left, I will dip the frag in a hydrogen peroxide/saltwater dip.

I have plenty of the aforementioned pink sponge also.
I haven't had any issues with this sponge and corals; as it grows on the rocks under my plating montipora colonies. There will even be patches of the sponge growing in my sump; which I will scrape out when I clean my sump.
I'll see if I can get some macro photos of the sponge colonies on my tank for comparison.
 
They are encrusting, they are only on one rock that doesn't have any coral on it. Remind me of the yellow type sponge.



 
Here's some pictures of a few of the sponges I have in my tank.

This is the pink sponge that I spoke of in my first post that I have in my display. (The camera flash makes it look more orange.)



Based on this photo, I'm not positive that it's the same pink sponge that you (Mark) included in the first post. It shares the same characteristics with what you show with the tendrils coming from the sponge.
But the pink sponge that shows up in my sump is a spot on match to your photo. This may be the same sponge just growing in different locations in "different" environments, hence the difference in appearance.


Here's the more common yellow sponge that is in multiple locations of the reef.
This sponge seems to not bother any corals and grows rather slowly in shaded areas.



Now here's the dreaded black sponge.
There's a patch of it under the rock (lower right) and now growing onto a millepora frag (left).



This sponge is a coral killer. It grows right over the top of the corals and kills them as it grows.
It is somewhat easy to remove by peeling it off of the rock; feels like a thin pliable leather. The problem is that if any small piece remains, it will grow back.
I am tempted to remove the entire rock that this sponge has attached itself to, but it's a great piece of rock (design-wise) and there're multiple corals that have encrusted onto the rock.
And even though it's easily identifiable in this photo when there's a flash, the sponge blends into the rock very well and it's hard to notice in everyday reef lighting.
 
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