It may just be the pic. I thought sponges were more "solid" in construction. Thanks for sharing.
Freshwater Sponges
- Thread starter fisher12889
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It may just be the pic. I thought sponges were more "solid" in construction. Thanks for sharing.
Looks like sponge to me, very cool to have found some that will grow in an aquarium, most of the time they starve. I get bryozoans where I live, they are cool, colonies big as basket balls sometimes, snails eat them like candy. There is a species of sponge that is green, it grows symbiotic algae in it's tissues, very nice to keep. Don't let all the "scrub and boil" people bother you, that what they used to do in salt water too now they pay big bucks for live rock with all the "critters' left alive. I do the same thing with bogwood, lots of neat stuff comes off that wood. Most harmful parasites have complex life cycles that cannot complete their lives in a closed system. If you feed lots of live daphnia you can get colonies of hydra, very cool and some of them are green and live off internal algae as well.
Are you referring to the green stringy stuff? A better picture would help us all. Didn't even know they had freshwater sponges till now. I've learned something new today!
I know they are kinda hard to see, but they are pretty "firm."
They seem to be doing well still. They are still growing and spreading, but slowly. The "scrub and boil" people crack me up, I'm sure most of them are only repeating what most tropical fish keepers say. Collecting wood, rocks, plants, and fish from the wild is probably safer than buying stuff from most pet stores lol. I love all the little critters that come with collected items. I do actually have some of the green hydra in my tank, but they are too small to get pictures of. I also have some of the standard, light colored hydra, which are quite a bit larger. I have large numbers of cyclops in my setup, and I think that's what they eat.
The sponges are the light colored things in the center of the pic. There are actually quite a few different species of freshwater sponge!
Interesting shots. All the freshwater sponges that I have ever seen were green, but other than the color, that is what they looked like.
That looks like sponge to me. Maybe it doesn't look cool but it is neat that you have it alive there like that. It might be difficult to maintain it long-term. It will need to have plenty of suspended food to eat. I remember I kept some sponge that I collected in the winter alive for more than a month in the refrigerator.
Very cool sponge growth! I don't get much in the way of interesting inverts from my driftwood since I collect in saltwater. Maybe I should try getting some from local rivers and ponds.
