Help ID this please! Good or Bad?

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Fishead77

Fishead77

Dork
Joined
May 7, 2006
Messages
308
Location
spokane
This critter is spawning, ahhhhhhhhh! Is it a sponge? Is it good or bad? I have enough sponges and don't really want more! Any thoughts? Sorry the picts. are poor, crappy camera (or photographer). Please scroll down for the pictures, I had problems uploading.
 
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spawning

Wow, that was hard! (turned out the med size was too much info to upload). I wanted to draw a circle around the item but I'll don't have the proper software program (anybody know where to get free photoshop?:)). It's the one right in the middle of the screen. I don't know how the pict. of my son got in there! :D
 
I wonder if it was coming from something like a snail or stomatella. Was it a white smoke coming from the sponge, or did you notice any other critters in the direct vacinity of it?
 
NaH2O said:
I wonder if it was coming from something like a snail or stomatella. Was it a white smoke coming from the sponge, or did you notice any other critters in the direct vacinity of it?
Click to expand...
No other critters. It was a white sphere attached to a rock. Last night I noticed little starburst type things coming off of it. They have all detached and now the sphere is smaller.
 
Hey it looks like a small green rodactis mushroom,and the yellow next to it looks like some sponge growing.
 
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Are those little white things kind of surrounding it the starbursts? Does this thing move at all? Is it hard, soft, etc?
 
NaH2O said:
Are those little white things kind of surrounding it the starbursts? Does this thing move at all? Is it hard, soft, etc?
Click to expand...
Yeh the things surrounding it are the starburst (very cool looking). They detatch and float off. The main ball has not moved and it is soft. I have another one like it, same shape. But it is an orange color and it moved form one coral to the other. I'm pretty sure it's a sponge but I have never seen one spawn like that (or whatever it was doing). :)
 
chris&barb said:
one of them is a small ball sponge( harmless and beneficial) the other one looks like a Salmon:D
Click to expand...
I figured it was a sponge but I've never seen them split/spawn or whatever it is they do. I think the other is a silver salmon:rolleyes:
 
Fishead77 said:
I have another one like it, same shape. But it is an orange color and it moved form one coral to the other. I'm pretty sure it's a sponge but I have never seen one spawn like that (or whatever it was doing). :)
Click to expand...

Ahhh....I'm pretty sure sponges don't move location to location. My thoughts are perhaps it is a type of filter feeding sea cucumber.
 
NaH2O said:
Ahhh....I'm pretty sure sponges don't move location to location. My thoughts are perhaps it is a type of filter feeding sea cucumber.
Click to expand...

Usually they don't move, but I have several in my tank that do move! They will slowly stretch in one direction and attach to the rock just a few mm or cm away. It will then slowly let go of the old spot. I have a couple that have moved about 3-4 inches in the last year from this method.

This process takes weeks to months, so it doesn't sound like what is going on in the tank for this thread.

Brian
 
First I'm not sure what that is but it does look like a ball sponge as Chris has sugested. And ball sponges can move ;) Need a better pic.

Yes, sponges do spawn. Like many male maine inverts it is a whitish cloud.

Yes some sponges can move/crawl.

Locomotion of sponges and its physical mechanism.
Bond C, Harris AK.
Department of Biology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 27599-3280.
Active locomotion by individual marine and freshwater sponges across glass, plastic and rubber substrata has been studied in relation to the behavior of the sponges' component cells. Sequential tracing of sponge outlines on aquarium walls shows that sponges can crawl up to 160 microns/hr (4 mm/day). Time-lapse cinemicrography and scanning electron microscopy reveal that moving sponges possess distinctive leading edges composed of motile cells. Sponge locomotion was found to be mechanically similar to the spreading of cell sheets in tissue culture both with respect to exertion of traction (which causes the wrinkling of rubber substrata) and with respect to the patterns of adhesive contacts formed with the substratum (as observed by interference reflection microscopy). Other similarities include the orientation of sponge locomotion along grooves and the preferential extension onto more adhesive substrata. Neither the patterns of wrinkling produced in rubber substrata nor the distributions of adhesive contacts seen by interference reflection microscopy show evidence of periodic, propagating waves of surface contractions, such as would be expected if the sponges' mechanism of locomotion were by peristalsis or locomotory waves. Our observations suggest that the displacement of sponges is achieved by the cumulative crawling locomotion of the cells that compose the sponge's lower surface. This mode of organismal locomotion suggests new explanations for the plasticity of sponge morphology, seems not to have been reported from other metazoans, and has significant ecological implications.


http://circadiana.blogspot.com/2006/03/do-sponges-have-circadian-clocks.html


Calhound Bond's, at the NWF, use to have video links of sponge locomotion but the links are now dead.
 
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