Sponges

[BooRadley]

If I put a tree sponge in a 55 gallon with an airstone a couple of feet away from it, with the air bubbles that linger in the water do damage to the sponge?

 

[steelhealr]

Most likely...sponges are colonies of cells that rely on water movement to trap it's food. The small cells have, well, to keep it simple hair/flagella like fibers that beat water to move water in and out of it. Sponges can die when exposed to air and, reportedly, I believe the air can block it's pores. SH

 

[Navarre]

I would not recoemdn an airstone in a marine tank at all. The micro bubbles that are formed will make a skimming action and thus you are turning your entire tank into a form of skimmer

 

[BooRadley]

I would not recoemdn an airstone in a marine tank at all. The micro bubbles that are formed will make a skimming action and thus you are turning your entire tank into a form of skimmer

Haha. I noticed that when I was first setting it up. Before I put any fish in it, I had the airstone in there, and stuck an old powerhead on top of that. It was shooting super-huge ammounts of micro-bubbles, but my sump had nasty goo on the surface. I asked around adn found out what I had done.

I have it in there for now as an additional way to keep the water cycled. I may just stick the hose down there with no stone, so it's a few large bubbles and not millions of small ones. A little less effective, but it will still stir the tank, and won't run much of a problem that way.

 

[Dragonscales]

I'd go so far as to ditch the tubing along with the airstone personally. If you are running a skimmer and have decent circulation in the tank then this should provide ample oxygen to the water.

A skimmer works by flooding the water in it's chamber with tiny bubbles with which to trap and remove waste, etc from the water and in doing so will automatically send a good deal of this oxygen to the tank as the water re-enters it.

Good water circulation within the tank provides good gas exchange at the surface which also aids in oxygenating the water, especially if there is some turbulance or if you use an overflow, etc.

 

[BooRadley]

Thanks. That sounds good. I have a kind of weak protine skimmer, I put the airstone in my sump just to keep that stirred up and oxygenated, have an overflow and trickle filter, plus an extra powerhead in the tank stirring things up, and went and bought another cheapo powerhead that supposedly about 200 gph and tossed it in the tank just to help a little more. I may put a wavemaker in it, too, because the corals and sponge are supposed to like that.

Something I was thinking of about looking at this setup is overstocking. How much do invertibrates count toward maximum occupancy? Like, I have a few corals, this sponge, two feather duster worms, aa couple of algae "plants", some hermit crabs and snails. Does this immoblie stuff usually count towards how much you can afford to stock?

I had originally had a dwarf angelfish in there, but he was the largest and most aggressive, so I gave him away. The rest are small, peaceful, reefsafe fish, like dartfish, percula clowns, a clingfish, and stuff like that. I've found that having a bunch of fish isn't necessary to have the thing looking like it has a ton of life if you have plenty of rockwork and some cool invertibrets like that. But how much do they count as an overcrowding problem?

 

[amstar15]

as far as inch per gallon, many of us do not go off of this. one of the main things to look at is what kind of wast the fish give off. the bigger the fish the bigger the waste.. the less amount of fish you can keep. the smaller the fish the less wast you have.. the more fish.. if that makes sense. the bigger factor i have found.. is more how do your fish get along with each other as far as space.

so as far as inverts go... i wouldnt worry about how much space as they take.. as much as i would be worried about how many shrimps I can keep togehter.

1 hermit crab to a gallon
1 snail to every 2-3 gallons if that makes sense.