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Invasive pest..Sponge?


Reef Aquatics

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Reef Aquatics

Can someone please help me ID this... Ive never seen this before and it has taken over my tank. I'm figuring it is

some kind of invasive sponge.. I never seen it before now. Its on the live rock, hermit shells and my sump

was infested. It was all over my pumps, reactor, heater and on the walls of the sump. I first seen it about 3

weeks ago in my overflow box. I didn't do much with my tank during quarantine as I was sick with a norovirus

(not Covid 19)..  I finally started feeling better this week. So I took the sump apart and cleaned all the equipment

and the sump itself. But its still on the live rock. How do I get rid of this?

 

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Joevember

Looks like a sponge. Not sure how to deal with them if they're everywhere in your tank already.

Some sponge species grow with a lot of silica in the water, which can accumulate if you don't have a good rodi. Are you able to test for silica/where is you water coming from?

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Reef Aquatics
13 hours ago, Joevember said:

Looks like a sponge. Not sure how to deal with them if they're everywhere in your tank already.

Some sponge species grow with a lot of silica in the water, which can accumulate if you don't have a good rodi. Are you able to test for silica/where is you water coming from?


 I use 12 stage RO/DI water .... so I highly doubt its my water.  The tank has been up for a year with no issues till

 4 weeks ago. So I'm not sure how my system would have got so much silica in it. Ive made no changes in

months.

 

 

 

 

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Joevember

Well, you don't come across invasive sponges often. I don't know of any critters or chemicals to deal with sponges, so I can only really recommend manual removal. 

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Huh, weird stuff. Best you can do is yank it out. 

 

What things do you have that graze on the rockwork? You may be able to get ahold of something that will eat the sponge. I bet sea urchins would plow through it on their way to other things. 

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Reef Aquatics

 

37 minutes ago, Tired said:

Huh, weird stuff. Best you can do is yank it out. 

 

What things do you have that graze on the rockwork? You may be able to get ahold of something that will eat the sponge. I bet sea urchins would plow through it on their way to other things. 

 

I have a Pin Cushion urchin..  He wont touch it.. 

 

You cant just yank it out. Its hard, almost calcified... It has to be scraped.  I had a hell of a time

removing it from my pumps and reactor. Took me 3 hours to clean out my sump and equipment.

It would have to be scraped off the rocks...

 

 

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Do you think it's actually calcified? If so, I bet lack of calcium would be bad for it. Bad for corals, too, mind you, but it may be a way to kill the stuff. Since it'll probably just regrow if scraped off. 

 

Do you have any extra buckets? I would start taking out chunks of rock, putting them in different test buckets, and seeing if there's anything that kills it off without harming other stuff too badly. Too much or too little salinity? 

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Reef Aquatics
3 hours ago, Tired said:

Do you think it's actually calcified? If so, I bet lack of calcium would be bad for it. Bad for corals, too, mind you, but it may be a way to kill the stuff. Since it'll probably just regrow if scraped off. 

 

Do you have any extra buckets? I would start taking out chunks of rock, putting them in different test buckets, and seeing if there's anything that kills it off without harming other stuff too badly. Too much or too little salinity? 

 

I don't know... It feels hard and It has to be scraped off.

 

My salinity is 1.023

 

My tank is a 20 gal long rimless. The problem with the rockscape is  that I have 2 large pieces and 2 smaller pieces.

The 2 big pieces are heavy and cant really be taken out.   This pest is mainly on the 2 large pieces.

 

Here is a pic of the rock when I first set it up.

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You should adjust your salinity up. You want 1.025-1.026, or it'll stress things out. 

 

Your scape is beautiful, but I'd be worried about your biofilter- most of that doesn't look very porous. You may have to take it out and scrub it regardless- I think your best bet at this stuff would be to scrape/scrub it off, then rinse the areas it was, then put the rock back. Or accept the stuff. 

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13 hours ago, Tired said:

You should adjust your salinity up. You want 1.025-1.026, or it'll stress things out. 

Sorry to hijack to his thread, but this is not really accurate. Natural specific gravity in the ocean varies widely from place to place.
The Indo-Pacific has a SG of 1.022-1.025, the Great Barrier Reef is 1.024-1.027, the Caribbean 1.023-1.026, and the Red Sea is 1.028-1.035(!)

Higher salinity becomes more important in higher water temperature: high salinity assists in zooxanthellae retention. 1.025 would be a good range if you’re keeping many animals from various geolocations, but a “lower” specific gravity like 1.022 is certainly not harmful, especially at sub-80° temperatures. 

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Reef Aquatics
16 hours ago, Tired said:

You should adjust your salinity up. You want 1.025-1.026, or it'll stress things out. 

 

Your scape is beautiful, but I'd be worried about your biofilter- most of that doesn't look very porous. You may have to take it out and scrub it regardless- I think your best bet at this stuff would be to scrape/scrub it off, then rinse the areas it was, then put the rock back. Or accept the stuff. 

 

I think 1.026 is high...My temp is 79 degrees. Ive had several successful reef tanks over the past 20 years

and never kept my salinity higher then 1.024. All I have in the current tank right now are Green Star Polyps, 

2 Juvenile Black Onyx Snowflake clowns and a Sharknose Goby.  I certainly see no need to keep the Salinity that high.

 

I'm not worried about the bio filter at all. I have a decent sand bad, and the rock is porous. Just hard to tell from a

the photo.. The tank has been up for a year and until this invasive pest. For the most part, I have had crystal clear

water.  I do 5 gallon water changes with 12 stage RO/ DI water and dose 2 part once a week. I use Instant Ocean salt.

 

 

 

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Reef Aquatics
2 hours ago, RedCrow said:

Sorry to hijack to his thread, but this is not really accurate. Natural specific gravity in the ocean varies widely from place to place.
The Indo-Pacific has a SG of 1.022-1.025, the Great Barrier Reef is 1.024-1.027, the Caribbean 1.023-1.026, and the Red Sea is 1.028-1.035(!)

Higher salinity becomes more important in higher water temperature: high salinity assists in zooxanthellae retention. 1.025 would be a good range if you’re keeping many animals from various geolocations, but a “lower” specific gravity like 1.022 is certainly not harmful, especially at sub-80° temperatures. 

 

 Thanks for your input...I agree.  My Salinity is 1.023 at a temp of 79 degrees.

 

 

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2 minutes ago, Reef Aquatics said:

I think 1.026 is high...My temp is 79 degrees. Ive had several successful reef tanks over the past 20 years

and never kept my salinity higher then 1.024. All I have in the current tank right now are Green Star Polyps, 

2 Black Onyx Snowflake clowns and a Sharknose Goby.  I certainly see no need to keep the Salinity that high.

Personally I agree with you. Once as an experiment I ran a softy/LPS reef at 1.018 for several months, and everything did marvelously. I wouldn’t recommend someone run that low, but it’s possible. 

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Reef Aquatics
1 minute ago, RedCrow said:

Personally I agree with you. Once as an experiment I ran a softy/LPS reef at 1.018 for several months, and everything did marvelously. I wouldn’t recommend someone run that low, but it’s possible. 

Wow that's interesting..  and nothing seemed stressed at all at 1.018 ?

 

I still need to figure out what this invasive pest is that I have in this tank. I searched on google and the

white branching sponges I found look different from what I have. The white sponges I see look soft and the

ones in my tank are more hard and have to be scraped off.  In 20 years of reef tanks Ive never seen this stuff

before.

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24 minutes ago, Reef Aquatics said:

Wow that's interesting..  and nothing seemed stressed at all at 1.018 ?

It started out as running fallow after an icy outbreak, then I didn’t raid it back up till fish were reintroduced. Which ended up being several months lol. I had a hammer and a rhodactis thang over doubled in size during that. 

 

25 minutes ago, Reef Aquatics said:

I still need to figure out what this invasive pest is that I have in this tank. I searched on google and the

white branching sponges I found look different from what I have. The white sponges I see look soft and the

ones in my tank are more hard and have to be scraped off.  In 20 years of reef tanks Ive never seen this stuff

before.

Maybe it’s a worm, kind of lime a spiroid worm? I’ve seen structures similar in shape before, but they were always soft and slimy, like a sponge or algae. I’m at a loss in this one 

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Reef Aquatics
1 minute ago, RedCrow said:

It started out as running fallow after an icy outbreak, then I didn’t raid it back up till fish were reintroduced. Which ended up being several months lol. I had a hammer and a rhodactis thang over doubled in size during that. 

 

Maybe it’s a worm, kind of lime a spiroid worm? I’ve seen structures similar in shape before, but they were always soft and slimy, like a sponge or algae. I’m at a loss in this one 

 

 I just emailed Robert Fenner at wetwebmedia.com.  I figure if anyone would know what this was.. he would.

 

So we shall see... I will let you know..

 

 

 

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You don't happen to have a strong magnifying glass or microscope, do you? A closer look at the stuff may help. It does remind me a bit of a spirobid worm- may be worth taking it apart somewhat to see if the structure varies inside. 

 

I would also take some out and put it in a little cup of vinegar. If it bubbles and/or dissolves, it has a lot of calcium in it. 

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