Something ate a sponge?

[Spartachris]

Weirdest thing happened. I had something growing on a rock--what I assumed was a sponge forming. It looked like dirty cotton and grew a little each day, slowing forming a rounded shape, ball-like on the underside of a rock.

This evening I went to look at it and it is completely gone! Vanished. Could something have eaten it? Was it not a sponge at all? Any ideas?

 

[joy13]

What type of fish do you have?

 

[Sebastian_Troy]

Dirty cotton... I have a little sponge, it is yellow and tiny, but I can still see lots of little pores in it, it also has a little tube coming out the middle so it looks like a little nipple on the rock, all sponges have a tube of some sort, whether they grow in a tube shape or it sticks out, because the draw water through the main body tissue, through the pores, and feed on things in the water, then they pass the waste water back out through the big opening tube, called the excurrent siphon.

Crabs and shrimp may eat small sponges, after all they are inclined to eat anything they can, as for fish I'm not sure many species do,
sponges seem an easy target as they are fleshy and can't move, so they are usually toxic in some way, (fun fact lol)

If we know what you have in your tank it might cut down the research we have to do to find out what might have eaten it!

Sent from my iPhone using Aquarium

 

[Spartachris]

Guess that would help! lol. I have two ocellaris (ocellarii?), a bunch of hermit crabs, some nassarius snails, a few strombus grazers and some little bristle worms. I caught one of the ocellaris' picking at another cotton-y growth on a different rock a few weeks ago. May be him.

I really should have taken a picture of it before, but do you think it was a sponge? And since, whatever they are, something is eating it, should I increase the feeding a bit?

Thanks!

 

[Sebastian_Troy]

I wouldn't increase feeding, after all it may have been eaten in preference to other food sources, as opposed to being a hungry crabs last resort, my guess is it was a crab, if it was indeed a sponge

However I had a similar thing in my tank, a blob of slightly jelly like White stuff which disappeared, shortly after cycling, so nothing to eat it in my tank,