Will a blue linkia starfish eat sponges?

[reefz]

My 150g tank is over growing with sponges. It’s been set up for about 3-4 years, and has all kinds of different colored sponges. I heard somewhere that blue linkias will get rid of it. But I need this fact checked. If not what would be a better option ?

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

While they may or may not eat very specific types of sponges, that's certainly not their primary food source and i definitely wouldn't try to introduce one in hopes it would eradicate your tank of sponges.

 

[Buckster]

I bought three sponges and put them in my 180. Each day the sponges were shrinking. I realized my tangs were eating them. I now have no sponges in my tank.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

My 150g tank is over growing with sponges. It’s been set up for about 3-4 years, and has all kinds of different colored sponges. I heard somewhere that blue linkias will get rid of it. But I need this fact checked. If not what would be a better option ?

Yeah, if you really want the sponges gone, then manual removal (specifically scraping and suctioning the sponges out) would be recommendation - though I’d offer the sponges to local reefers before just getting rid of them.

Just to put this out there - the problem with using biological controls (i.e. something that eats it) with sponges is that there are a ton of different sponges, some of which look indistinguishable from others. Some of these sponges are inedible or extremely undesirable foods to some species (either because of chemical defenses* or just because of taste preferences) while being highly desirable to other species. So, even if you pull in a known sponge-eating species of fish/starfish/whatever, there's no guarantee it will eat the sponge you want it to eat. Also, many of these sponge-eating species eat other things (like coral) that you might not want them eating.

Long story short, manual removal is probably your best option for sponges until more study has been on both specific sponges and specific sponge-eaters, but you can try it if you want.

*Just as a note on the chemical defenses of sponges, many sponges produce chemicals to avoid being eaten. Some of these chemicals are more generalized, some of them are specifically anti-fish, some are specifically anti-echinoderm (starfish, urchin, etc.), etc. So, again, some things might eat one sponge but not another, and because of the whole indistinguishable thing mentioned above, the sponges that are and are not being eaten may look pretty much identical (some may be distinguished/ID'ed under microscopic investigation, others may need to be DNA tested to be distinguished/ID'ed).

Just my two cents here.