Local Sponges?? ID?? - (GOM ecotype tanks)

[Ruge13]

Hello,
I have a growth on a rock in my tank that looks somewhat like a sponge. It grows slowly and is a blue color. Total size is about 1 inch across. I also have another in my refugium that is orange. Looks similar.

The Blue one came out of no where and started to grow. It looks like a colony of round blobs with a white center. Sorry I don;t have better pictures. My crabs ignore it.

The Orange one started as a small 1 cm ball attached to some cheato I found at low tide. This was about 2 months ago. I have found other sponges that I know are definitely sponges and dies quickly, but this one has not died. Maybe I got lucky and have a libve one now..Since then, it has moved off the ball and flattened out along the wall of my refugium. It still looks like a sponge, but it moved?? Basically, as one edge grows forward the opposite edge dies back. the brightest color is in the leading edge. Sponges don't move, so I have no idea what this is now? Granted, it moved by growing and over a 2 month period but still...The orange one had visible pores on the surface.

The orange picture was taken through the plastic in my fuge from behind. I don't have a good front on shot. The Blue is a front on shot from the rock.

I said low tide...this is a New England species tank. Everything in it is from Boston Harbor or South Cape Cod. Outside of a little Southdown I got from a fresh bag to mix with some sand, everything is local and not tropical.

Any idea what these things are? I am pretty sure the blue one is not snail eggs. Could be worms maybe...

 

[NateHanson]

Cool! A New England tank! How do you keep it cool enough? Do you use a chiller? Tell me what else you have in there for livestock? More Pics!!

The second one looks like a sponge to me. The first one, I wouldn't know.

 

[conrad]

Very cool (literally) -- a local temperate tank!

My family had one a long time ago. Our house on Coast Guard Beach in Eastham washed away in the Blizzard of '78, and we had to spend summers and weekends on "the mainland" at my grandmother's house in town after that. I think my parents were worried about the children's fragile little psyches, so they made sure we spent as much time in Nauset Marsh that next Summer as possible. We converted one of our old FW tanks and spent most of our spare time "specimening" in the marsh. We had all sorts of neat things in it. My brother even found a viable skate egg case on the ocean side one day, and we hatched and raised that for a few months (until the baby lobster ate it I think). Anyway, I was thinking of starting another temperate Nauset Marsh tank this Summer and was wondering if anyone else around here had done anything similar.

Technology we had at the time was FW technology circa 1975. Living less than a mile from the marsh though made it easy to do very frequent large water changes. During particularly hot days when low tide was in the middle of the day (making it harder to get fresh cool water from the marsh) we had to float bags of ice of course.

Sorry to hijack your thread, btw -- I have no idea what those things are.

--cn

 

[Ruge13]

As someone who is pasionate about coastal conservation and fisheries related topics (avid fisherman and kayaker) I had some ethical issues with borrowing a few critters from tide pools but I am over it.

I could write a book on this tank and I don't even have much in it yet so forgive me for being long winded. I also didn't spell check.

I am 99% sure the orange is a sponge. Only because I had this in there for a while but it died. The pic is the large one I had, and the small ball, maybe 1/2" wide that the orange sponge usd to be the day I got it.

I did a bunch of asking around, and reaseaching local tanks before I set this up. Its a 90 gal aga that I drilled for a 1 1/2" Overflow. I put the overflow in and built a DIY skimmer that works like a charm. I have about 120 gal all together with the Sump and fuge. NE critters do not like, or are not exposed to much light, so I have 2 10K PC and 2 10K Actinics on top that I run for 10 hours a day. most of my algae, rock, and soon to be critters are from tidal zones so current is key. I have a powerhead in the tank throwing 550 GPH and a Mak 4 on the loop with a 3 ft head loss so the current in that tank is cranking.

This tank has been up and going since the beginning of February. I chose to do it over the winter because of a couple things. I wanted to do it right, build the ecosystem from the ground up just like a reef tank. this is even more important because as you know the rock around here is not exactly porous so the biological filtration ability of granite is not so great. So, I needed a solid bacteria and algae base long before the tank was ever to have a critter in it. So, I started in Feb with a couple bags of fresh dry southdown and a 5 gal bucket full of gewy, muddy, silicate filled Cotuit sand.
This stuff was so full of life its amazing! I had more worms the first couple weeks than I ever care to know was in a couple square feet of sand.

The gist of the pre setup research said NE tanks are tough. And they die. Usually because people try to generate reef like environments adding life that comes from dark, dirty, cold, NE water. You do that and they die. You have to accept the fact that your tank is not going to act like, look ike, or generally behave like a reef. So I have to adapt all reef related info to NE water. So, I never set up the skimmer until recently. I wanted the bacteria and algae to do it all for as long as possible. If there is one thing NE is not lacking its muscles. So to keep them alive I need dirty water.

So, for 3 weeks all I had in the tank was the sand, a couple small baseball sized rocks, and some macro algae. I have yet to ID all this stuff but found a few books that I need to pick up to do it. So for now, I had Chaeto (grows here like crazy, but you have to really look for it), Ulva (even more of this, especailly this time of year) and some brown and red algaes. Even had some Kelp.

As expected the kelp died. Requires very cold temps that I don't have yet.
With a window open and a fan on the sup/fuge I keep the tank between 60-68. Temp swings are never more than 2 or 3 degrees a day. Seems like a lot, but remember this is not a reef tank. NE water swings that much on a tide.

Anyway, After I started seeing massive amounts of pods int he fuge and on the glass I started adding stuff. Started with snails. 50 of them. And a bunch more rock. Added some base rock from Sea Creatures just to maybe help the filtration aspect of the tank. Built a 2D wall on one side. Let that go for a couple weeks. Within a month the tank cycled. Amonia and other params were at 0.

So, after that I added a couple crabs. 2 Wharf and 2 green. They eat and molt like crazy. Got a rock covered in barnacles. More snails, and a rock with some feather dusters on it. Also those orange sponges. All this over the course of a couple weeks. Also added 5 or 6 hermits.

Research said the tank would die. Everything would go into shock and couldn't handle temps. I expected that going in so I never aclimated a thing. Just dropped it in and see what happens. This whole thing is an experiment. Well, 3 months later and no deaths, no die offs, and no amonia issues. Lost a snail or two to the crabs and a few suicide climbers to the carpet but other than that the tank is healthy and I have all kinds of stuff growing. I added some coraline covered rocks I found in tide pools and that is starting to grow. I had a feather duster explosion, and the pod population is really high. Algae grows VERY slow in NE so the browns are creeping along. The reds greaw fast and the greens are eaten as fast as they go in the tank by snails. I have yet to find a way to keep them form being eaten. Ulva lasts about 1 day before its gone. I live on the water so I use NSW to top off every once in a while, or purchased RO water. I love about 1 gallon a day with the fan running full blast.

The worms and crabs keep the tank clean. I never fed the tank one thing, not one water change because params are good, nothing. Just last week I started feeding the tank muscles. I crushed up 1 every other day and tossed it in. The tank goes nuts, its cool to see what crawls out to get it.

So, now I am just letting it go until I can start snorkling again. Probably this weekend. I want to get some shrimp and a small winter flounder as well as a variety of bait fishes. We'll see. But so far, I am very happy with the result.

As soon as the tax refund check comes I am getting a chiller to dorp the temp down to mid to low 60's and stable. Then I will add fish. So far, I have had spikes up to 76 degrees before I got the fan and everything was fine so I am really not worried about temp, but I expect the tank to be more healthy and lively at a lower temp.

I have pics of some critters I will post tomorrow.

I want the coraline to take off in an effort to make the tank less brown, so I am going to start dosing calc soon with a DIY drip. DIY is the theme of this tank given that it is an experiment of sorts.

 

[conrad]

Yes, that's definitely a sponge. Much better pictures than the others.

Indeed, temperature swings aren't so much a worry as with a tropical reef tank. We got nearly all our stuff from marshes, mostly Nauset Marsh. Marsh environments can have HUGE temperature swings. A shallow pothole on a hot day with low tide in the early afternoon is very hot. Stuff lives there. Anyway, keeping things cool is probably a good idea, but I don't think a couple of degrees variance is at all an issue.

Like I said, we had 1975 FW technology (or lack thereof), so our main ally was frequent water changes. I don't think we even knew about tropical SW, let alone reef tanks then, so we just grabbed a bunch of stuff from the marsh and put it on top of the UGF and let 'er rip. Of course we had silicate sand, not aragonite, but I don't remember that we had any algae problems really. And we certainly wouldn't have known about calcium or alkalinity. Basically, if it wasn't in the marsh, it wasn't in our tank. (And pretty much if it was in the marsh and looked even remotely interesting, it *was* in our tank -- not much escaped our eager little eyes.)

I can't even list all the things we had in there, we had so much rotating through the tank. It was only 35g, so when we found something really cool sometimes something else would have to go back to the marsh. And of course we discovered a few predator-prey relationships we hadn't previously understood.

Anyway, that's really great to hear what you're doing. Do keep us informed, though maybe they'll kick us out of the Reef Talk forum into the Lounge. ;-)

I may experiment with this this Summer. Thank you for your story!

--cn

 

[conrad]

Oh yeah, lobsters, no matter how small, eat just about anything, baby flounders and baby skates included. Of course taking a baby lobster would be illegal anyway I guess.

Squid make a mess if they get excited and ink. The babies are really cute though.

You should maybe try a net from a canoe in addition to snorkeling. We did lots of walking, wading and canoeing, but most of the stuff came from the canoe. Lots of stuff is on the surface, where you wouldn't be able to see it with a snorkel and mask. If it's calm you can see the fins and their wake from things like 2- and 3-spined sticklebacks and pipefish and other such things. We also found baby eels (elvers) on the surface.

Happy specimening!

--cn

 

[testhead1313]

Hey Ruge, I'm glad I'm not the only nut. For the past few summers, I have set up small tanks (6-10 gallon) dedicated to things I find while snorkeling. It's an amazing ecosystem right at our front door that many people don't recognize. I have kept many northern puffers with great success (acclimate well, great personality, and eat anything). I have also kept a small unknown blenny (I grabbed an oyster shell to see if it was alive and the little blenny was hiding inside). Also, juvenile sea robins, flounder, tautogs, cunner are fairly hardy, but of course, they get huge eventually. I have also seen tons of pipefish, but have not attempted to keep them for fear of not providing the right foods. Let me know if you ever find a lumpfish because I would love to try keeping one of them (I don't believe they frequent Buzzards Bay...).

For snails, Ilyanassa obsoleta or nothern mud whelks do an excellent job of stirring up the substrate and keeping the glass clean (these are the same ones that some people are trying to sell on Ebay, the millions of snails crawling around on mudflats...I have a post on this forum somewhere about them). Watch out for oyster drills, Urosalpinx cinera, because they will eat any bivalve or barnacle you put in there. Also chitons are commonly found in our waters and I have found them quite benign.

Rule number 1 for me the next time I set up a local tank: NO CRABS!! Crabs eat everything! Fish, snails, other crabs, you name it! Hermit crabs are fine, but as you know, hermits are not true crabs, so the warning does not apply. Ghost (glass) shrimp are fine and good detrius eaters, but seemingly all fish find them quite tasty. I have never seen juvenile lobsters, so I have no experience with them.

My tank specs were pitiful (10 gallon, Normal output light, magnum 350, no skimmer, frequent water changes) but none of the inhabitants were kept in their homes for more than 3 months before being released (and don't worry, they were never in contact with any other fish that could transfer parasites that would decimate local populations)

Good luck with the new adventure and keep us posted.
By the way, I believe your first pic is of the colonial golden star tunicate, Botryllus schlosseri. Check here for pics. For a great reference to local species, take a look at Andrew J. Martinez Marine Life of the North Atlantic. It's an excellent guide to commonly observed species.
Chris

 

[Brian]

That guide's key for GOM critters... Chris, I'd wager dimes to donuts (mmm donuts...) that that blenny you found is a rock gunnel, as for lump fish you'll have better luck finding them in colder waters IMHO. For any and all who are keeping or are thinking of keeping a cold marine tank, maybe of the species you think would be cool to have are not legal to keep or collect without permits. Winter flounder is legal so long as it's over a certain size and is collect in the correct season and lobsters... Well that's REALLY playing with fire to collect without a permit, undersized bugs, it's really not worth it. All that said, these tanks can be really rewarding and just as nice as a tropical reef tank. I've kept a few of these tanks over the years before making the jump to warmer waters and one of these days I'll get back to it, in the mean time if anyone would like some help finding stickle back, small species sculpin, or what have you let me know, I see them all the time while diving and would love to help.

 

[NateHanson]

This is sooo cool! I'm definitely setting up a GOM ecotype tank when I can manage to set up another tank!

By the way, you mentioned that you're sometimes topping off with NSW, and not doing water changes. That'll raise your salinity significantly if repeated enough times, so keep an eye on the sg. Best to use RO or RODI for top off.

I'd love to see more pictures from any of you when you have a chance.

Nate

 

[Brian]

Good Point Nate, Also bare in mind that since the temp is colder all the changes we see in a warm reef both good and bad can happen in a GOM system but will take longer to come about. Another ting to consider, I saw mentioned that temp swings don't matter so much as they're tidal species... Be careful with that, some of them may be tidal species and be tolerant of big temp swings (10+ degrees within the course of a day) but some others may not. some of the snails, stickle backs, green crabs, hermits etc will be fine with it but flounders and squid (just a few mentioned) won't fare so well. Just a little FYI

 

[Ruge13]

Brian is right. Which is another reason why I am selective about what I get. Most places it is illegal to even take a couple muscles to feed the tank where shell fishing is not permitted. I snorkle with a lobster permit, have for a couple years. No better way to get them in my opinion. Traps are for sissies

I had planned on just baitfish and some crabs and shrimp for just that reason, legality. I fish for winter flounder so you would think I would put 2 and 2 together on that one given thats the reason I am not getting some other species. I can't get them and others like togs, cod, lobsters, etc in sizes small enough legally to be healthy in a 90 gallon tank. I am no poacher and I plan to stay that way so short fish will not be in this tank.

Having said that, I have a couple muscles in the tank and that's what I feed the tank with. Shellfishing is not legal in most places. They also come on every rock, weed, snail, sand etc in New England so its tough to avoid them. Fortunatly the crabs eat them before they practically hit the bottom of the tank.

As for water changes. I know all about the salinity issue. I top off with RO water, but occaisonally use NSW when my salinity creeps low to bring it back up. I swap out a few gallong here and there, but no scheduled larger water changes for maintenance purposes. The tank pretty much takes care iof itself at this point. I like to think thats because I did it right and built it VERY slowly from the bacteria up. I have a 6" DSB.

I am aware of the temp issue as well. I has a few spikes sure, but like I said I am going to stabalize the temp long before fish or other non tidal species are in there. Thats where the chiller comes in. Currently the tamp is more stable thn when I started around 68. But I plan to drop that with the chiller and keep it stable.

The tidal issue is another concern for those thinking about a GOM tank. Remember there is a 9 ft + swing in tide. So, most of the tidal critters are used to and prefer to be dry/damp some of the time. Fully submerging them means they either die off slowly, or climb to the top and out of the tank.

There is a diference between having a GOM tank and being somewhat responsible about it. I am not interested in just keeping some stuff in a tank. I am mor einterested in doing it right, I want the tank to be healthy. Otherwise they go back where they came from.

 

[NateHanson]

Shellfishing is illegal in Massachusetts?? Figures I guess. Seems like in MA you need a permit to scratch your . . . nevermind. Let's just say I'm looking forward to moving back to Maine. Plenty of muscles and clams to be had up there.

 

[Ruge13]

Some GOM tank Porn...
First pic...worms. The red ones are actually 1 worm. Sort of a spaghetti worm, but actually pretty. They stick out above the sand here and there for short periods of time to feed. Also one of the bristly/ clam worms. I have plenty of them, and a few that are easily over a foot in length at this point. The middle image is one of the fan worms. The largest one I have. The top is about 2 cm wide at this point

Second Pic - Thought I had aptasia, or a form of it anyway from a rock in Cotuit. Started with 1, then 8 on the same rock. They moved around. Once the crabs were in, gone.

Third - A periwinkle looking out from under the shell

4 - Gotta love barnacles. They are cool critters and very active. They molted once every couple days at first and have since slowed down.

5 - some green macro that I had in there at first but prefers colder temps so it died off once the snails atacked it and ait ALL of it.

 

[Ruge13]

1 - I had a bunch of these copepods. They are cool to watch feed since they act like a praying mantis.

2 - half tank shot with horrible ugly light.

3 - Muscles are pretty cool looking when open, and them move around a bunch. The small ones will climb 24" of glass in an hour or so.

 

[testhead1313]

Very cool pics, any full tank shots?? I also had no luck whatsoever keeping macroalgae in my tanks, but good luck with it and just make sure you don't need a permit for them Brian, I am 99% sure that "Sandy" the blenny was not a rock gunnel. It had the typical blenny body shape (think lawnmower blenny, but skinnier), but never grew larger than 1.5". He liked to make small caves under the rocks and hang out down there all day watching the action. I could be wrong, but let me see if I have pics of him anywhere around.
Ruge, I also attempted to keep baitfish, but had little to no success. Peanut bunker in late summer are obligate plankton feeders, and obviously don't stay the size of peanuts. Very cool to swim through a large school of these if you get a chance. Herring are definately illegal to keep (and hard to find I've found). Mummichoggs (known as killifish) are quite hardy, but they are also considered brackish and found in estuaries; great fluking bait BTW. And finally there are the silversides (I believe a type of anchovy)... It seems like you look at these guys the wrong way and they die. Very fragile, but I have kept them alive for roughly 2 months with VIGOROUS aeration, and I mean seltzer water!
Again good luck and keep us posted!
Chris

 

[maurod]

Also, juvenile sea robins, flounder, tautogs, cunner are fairly hardy, but of course, they get huge eventually. .
Chris

Whats wrong with a huge flounder? Nothing a frypan and some butter can't fix! (Sorry, could not resist)

M.

 

[redpaulhus]

Sweet !

I've been keeping native marine tanks for a few years now.

My current 55g tank is empty aside from a few snails and the seaworms living in the DSB, but I'm going collecting again soon.
I usually keep killies, choggies (cunner), grass shrimp, and anything else (non-gamefish) I find in a keepable size range.

I usually seine\dipnet my fish, although I may try snorkling this year (I want a juvie searobin and haven't had much luck seining for one).


I see orange sponges like that alot in rocky areas around here, but I haven't tried one in a tank yet - I want to setup a 'fuge first and get some plankton reproducing first.

Do you have any coraline on your rock ? I found some neat coraline encrusted rocks off of the coast of Marshfield, but it grows really slowly in my tank.

I'm thinking of making some arago-crete caves and "liverock" for my tank down the road, I want a bit more biofiltration in the rockwork, which just doesn't happen with the local granite rocks !

I keep my tank in the basement, which means it usually stays in the 60's during the summer - so I stay with coastal fishes that can handle the warmer temps, no deepwater stuff.

I wrote a quick article on this for the BAS a few years ago, I think there's still a copy online - http://www.ichthyophilia.com/columns/gc2.html

 

[Ruge13]

Yes I do have Coraline...Most people think of NE as being brown. But its really not. For example, here is a pic I took while snorkling for my little clawed friends. Notice the coraline, and lots of color.

Anyway, here are some other pics of my hermit tearing into some food droped in there. I have a few rocks with coraline on them. Everything in NE grows REALLY SLOW. Except for brown slime algae and worms which grow REALY FAST! Anyway, I have a bunch in the tank, but not a ton for new growth. the rocks that had it were banged up from being in a tidal area, but have since filled in. This is an old picture of the single rock.

The hermit picture is newer, but none of it is new growth.

Whats odd though, is in the fuge I didn't have a single rock with coraline on it. It has the least flow and brightest light. However, I have new coraline growth all over in there...go figure.
when I rockscape the other side of the tank (currently just sand) I plan to do the same as I did with the one side. Ue base rock underneith (let it turn to live) and add local granite rock on top.

 

[conrad]

What is GOM, Gulf Of Mexico? There aren't any more local guides? (I'll check next time I'm down the Cape -- my family has an extensive library of local natural history books and guides.)

I probably should have made more than a passing mention of the legality of this stuff before. Do not mess with taking short lobsters. Other stuff may also be an issue, but none so much as that. Heck, you divers might need to watch your backs around pots too, but that's more a redneck issue than a legal issue.

When we were doing this stuff we were pretty much beyond the law. We used to own over twelve acres of Nauset Marsh and Coast Guard Beach, before it was taken by eminent domain in the creation of the Cape Cod National Seashore Park, after which point we leased it back. We pretty much lived off the land in the Summer, and weekends in the Spring and Fall. The shellfish warden would just smile at us, wave, and shake his head when he saw us going by in the canoe, with only about an inch of freeboard because it was so full of plunder. We put in and out from the creek by our house on the beach side, not the town landings on the mainland side. Poor Phil -- I remember with glee the Summer he had a bounty on moonsnails and their egg cases. Boy, did we clean him out! That was pretty much the only time we ever showed him our catch. ;-)

I was going to mention similar things about the baitfish. Mummichogs were fine, but we thought they were boring. Silversides look neat, but agreed, they have a particular knack for dying. They quickly became crab food. Yeah, crabs are pretty omnivorous. Only the lobster was worse.

Also agreed that not everything is equally hardy about temperature swings. All of the stuff we had came from the marsh and most of it was. And the point about intertidal species is a good one. We noticed too that some stuff just didn't like being underwater all the time. Things like periwinkles (what we called periwinkles btw, look a bit different from those in the pics) will simply crawl out, but other stuff just fails to thrive. We were very good though about taking things back to the marsh if they started to look unhappy.

Anyway, it's cool to hear that others are doing this. I'd love to give it a shot with the more modern technology available today.

--cn

 

[Ruge13]

Like I said, I am no poacher. Short fish and bugs are safe from me.

GOM = Gulf of Maine