Sponges are some of the most amazing, interesting and almost alien creatures found in many marine habitats but one place they don’t belong, is in a reef tank. This statement is not a popular viewpoint in the reef aquarium hobby…
Five Reasons Sponges Are BAD For A Coral Reef Aquarium
Sponges are some of the most remarkable life forms that we can encounter in the ocean. These resilient and diverse ‘creatures’ are not quite single celled, not quite organisms, but colonies of single cells all working together. The can be…
Canada Protects Rare Glass Sponge Reef
Glass Sponge Reef Last month the Canadian government declared the Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound a Marine Protected Area (MPA). The area is recognized as an important and exceptional marine habitat as the reefs are made up of large colonies…
Sponges, Sponges Everywhere!
If you do any diving anywhere, you will see sponges everywhere. Some of them are more colorful than corals, and some of them you can sit in. All sponges are water pumps and filters, which makes them useful in the…
Sponge farming on the Island of Pohnpei Micronesia
We’ve heard of coral farming, oyster farming, seaweed farming and yes even sea squirt farming, but sponge farming was a first. We see a few small colorful varieties of sponges being sold for reef tanks, however there is not a large…
Rock Beauty Angelfish: a Finicky Feeder Best Left in the Sea
On one of my earliest dives down in the Florida Keys back in the 1990s, a gorgeous yellow and black angelfish caught my attention as I drifted over a section of reef. In my mind’s eye, I envision the angel…
Oldest Known Sponge Fossil Found In China
A newly published article documenting the discovery of a tiny fossil from Southern China is helping to expand our understanding of the very earliest stages of the evolution of multicellular animal life. (image above is Eocyathispongia. Image from Yin et al…
Neat photosynthetic blue sponge likes to live among stony corals
Corals command so much of the spotlight when it comes to aquariums, it’s easy for us reefers to forget that there’s an incredible diversity of other creatures that populate the reef environment. One such critter that caught our attention on the…
This sponge sure does look familiar…
We had to chuckle when we came across this image of a stovepipe sponge along side Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster in the Daily Mail. Spotted by underwater photographer Mauricio Handler, while he was diving in off the Dutch Caribbean, this Muppet-like…
New deep sea carnivorous harp sponge is unlike anything ever seen
Chondrocladia lyra is a highly unusual and very specialized sponge living in the deep sea which completely redefines what we think a sponge should be. Also known as the harp sponge due to its very similar appearance consisting of a main vane…
