Still in the progress of experimentation of sponges, after research on its diet and placement.. Because they take in bacteria and phyto, I increased my dosage of phytoplankton in my food mix and dosing bacteria weekly... As there are not much research on which bacteria they take in, be it size and amount...
Current time frame is two months, which is still considered short for any azoox but at least I am seeing some results...
The targeted sponge is the common purple branching sponge, I managed to find a giant one for testing at CF, was packed and handled in a good way at least in CF, whatever the collector did is pretty out of our control, depends on luck..
The sponge was doing well for 1-2 weeks before something happened.. It started to turn grey on the surface of the sponge and after that they become thinner but it is not dying as it is back to its healthy state, just thinner.. this continued for every week before it stop 2 weeks back..
It is encrusting well to any part of the rock that the sponge have contact with.. it is excrusting very well on several rocks and spreading... This helps them as the flow in our tank is different from where they come from and with contact they will start to encrusted and be stable..
Some findings that we can concluded from here, though not really very details or substantive but just some reference for future reefer who are trying azoox sponges.
1) The weekly dosing of bacteria - increase density of bacteria
2) Good and strong flow - helps in removing dirt and detritus from the sponge
3) Increase in food supply - helps in preventing starvation
4) Maximize surface contact - help in stabilizing the sponge
In short, sponges are still difficult for average reefers and I still do not encourage reefers to buy them if you do not wanna take effort in providing what they need.. The information that I have provided is just my own findings within a short time frame, I do not see it as a success but it is show positive results so far..