Hi
My latest visit to the LFS resulted in my coming home with a sponge, it came with a lovely little colony of tiny daisy like polyps which caught my eye. He threw it in for free because the sponge was decaying round the edges and wished me luck. Having checked the book/net, I thought it was a red tree sponge and duly cut away the dead bits, rubbed off some of this light hair-like growth that it has all over it and gave it a dose of phytoplankton. Then I read the book again, and realised its not a red tree sponge because the surface of the sponge is smooth whereas the picture in the book shows the surface full of ridges and bumps. Now I'm worried that the little hairs might actually have belonged to the sponge and weren't algae as I thought (however they came off very easily). Also I interpreted the word 'polyps' in the book to be referring to the tiny white egg-like polyps (with a little tuft of hair at the top) that were growing on the sponge (so I scraped round them), but presumably they're not anything to do with the sponge at all. Are they bad? could they be causing the problem? should I remove them?, or is it likely to be air-exposure that caused all this and in fact it is a red tree sponge that's so far gone that it no longer has an uneven surface.
Any help gratefully received
How come every time I go to my LFS, within hours I'm scouring the net with a new problem/question!! I went there for two mandarin fishes and came back with a dodgy sponge, a xenia that's gone a bit homesick and two fire shrimp (God they are sooo gorgeuous), and a couple of accessories - and £75 the lighter. I do my research, go in with a plan and the moment I walk in and see all these tanks full of amazing stuff, my head turns to jelly.
My latest visit to the LFS resulted in my coming home with a sponge, it came with a lovely little colony of tiny daisy like polyps which caught my eye. He threw it in for free because the sponge was decaying round the edges and wished me luck. Having checked the book/net, I thought it was a red tree sponge and duly cut away the dead bits, rubbed off some of this light hair-like growth that it has all over it and gave it a dose of phytoplankton. Then I read the book again, and realised its not a red tree sponge because the surface of the sponge is smooth whereas the picture in the book shows the surface full of ridges and bumps. Now I'm worried that the little hairs might actually have belonged to the sponge and weren't algae as I thought (however they came off very easily). Also I interpreted the word 'polyps' in the book to be referring to the tiny white egg-like polyps (with a little tuft of hair at the top) that were growing on the sponge (so I scraped round them), but presumably they're not anything to do with the sponge at all. Are they bad? could they be causing the problem? should I remove them?, or is it likely to be air-exposure that caused all this and in fact it is a red tree sponge that's so far gone that it no longer has an uneven surface.
Any help gratefully received
How come every time I go to my LFS, within hours I'm scouring the net with a new problem/question!! I went there for two mandarin fishes and came back with a dodgy sponge, a xenia that's gone a bit homesick and two fire shrimp (God they are sooo gorgeuous), and a couple of accessories - and £75 the lighter. I do my research, go in with a plan and the moment I walk in and see all these tanks full of amazing stuff, my head turns to jelly.
. Before you laugh however, you should've seen the ones I rejected!! Oh well. 
it worked - except that I uploaded two from the same angle, when in fact one of them was supposed to be from the front... 
. Your best bet is to leave it be and let it gain stability. Feed phyto regularly and you should do ok with it 
