Sponge rot or dying???

jamesgang

New Member
My wife put this sponge in her nano a few weeks ago and since it has started to turn white on the backside.
Is this thing dying and need to be taken out or what's the deal?
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tatuvaaj

Member
jamesgang,

Yes, the sponge is dying :( What you could try to do is to cut healthy parts of the sponge (underwater!) and place them in different parts of the tank to see where it grows best.

IME the species you have is not that difficult, I had a large specimen for a long time. Unfortunately it died due to accident in my tank (I still have several small fragments of it around the tank). Here's a picture of it when it was still healthy:
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jamesgang

New Member
It's never touched air.
How do you go about cutting it of an existing piece of rock? And do you need to attach it to something else to keep it from floating around the tank?
 

tatuvaaj

Member
In my experience the best tool to use are sharp scissors. After you have cut the healthy pieces off, you should take the rock out of water and carefully remove the dead sponge from the rock.

Again, IME, for sponges the best way to secure them in place is to just push them to holes in rocks or between the rocks while trying to apply as little pressure on to the sponge as possible. If this is not possible, you can use plastic toothpicks or fishing line to secure them.
 

jamesgang

New Member
It is actually wrapped around a piece of coral. What I am going to do is try to cut away the dead part and leave it attached to the coral if possible. That should work as well shouldn't it?
One other question- will the fact that it is dying cause harm to anything else in the tank? We had an anemone die about 4-5 days ago- could that be what happened to the sponge? I understand that dying/dead anemones produce toxins that will kill or damage other marine life. Thanks for your help!
 

lcstorc

Well-Known Member
The one and only thing I know (or think I know) about sponges is that they cannot tollerate even the briefest exposure to air. I recently added one to my reef and was told to keep a very close eye on it for dieoff so apparently they release some toxin or something detrimental to the tank. So far mine looks godd (knock on wood), but I would take the above advice and remeove the dead/dying parts as soon as possible to prevent whatever bad may happen by leaving it in.
Sorry for the sketchy info but this is a very new area for me. Hopefully someone who knows much more will chime in with more useful info.
 

DELSOL650

New Member
Yup, I had tons of die off from my coral encrusted rock from TBS. It had tons of sponges on it. I was stuck and HAD to inspect the rocks as fast as possible without inadvertantly adding bad hitchhickers.. Even though it took me a few seconds to check the rocks.. I had tons of sponge die off. The worst smell I ever encountered. I was using the TBS rock to cure the tank. 100lbs worth and they all had sponges.. More that 50% of the sponges survived the air experience though. RED, BURGUNDY, YELLOW ( looks like a bee hive ) tunicates as well.

for the dead ones I had to scrape them off manually with toothbrush.. the smell made me almost puke several times.. Wife did not even want to go to the house.. she spent most of the evening at cousins house untill house was aired out and carbon cleaned out most of the smell. The smell lingered for a week or so.....
 
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