Phylum Porifera

Cerianthids look very similar to sea anemones. They are solitary, living buried in soft sediments. Tube anemones live and can withdraw into tubes, which are made of a fibrous material, which is made from secreted mucus and threads of nematocyst-like organelles, known as ptychocysts.

S. officinalis is a hermaphrodite; each one has both ova and sperm. When ripe, their sperm escape the body through vents and float around the sea until they are sucked into the pores of another sponge by a water current. This sponge is dark grey or purplish when alive. When dry they can either be yellow or brown.

Sponges are similar to other animals in that they are multicellular, heterotrophic, lack cell walls and produce sperm cells. Unlike other animals, they lack true tissues and organs and have no body symmetry.

Stove-pipe sponges  can grow to lengths of up to five feet. They consume tiny pariticles and organisms, such as plankton and detritus that are suspended in the water current. Stove-pipe sponges are slow-growing animals that can live for hundreds of years. Their natural predators are snails.

These sponges are lobate, repent masses with a tendency to form upright, short, anastomosing tubes. Individual lobes 2-3 cm in diameter, tubes up to 4 cm high. Oscules and vents apical, up to 12 mm in diameter, flush or with thin collars.  

These sponges are  chiefly massive, frequently lobate to rarely ramose. Ramose outcrops up to 15 cm long, lobes up to 6 cm high. Total size up to 17 cm in diameter in massive specimens. Their surface is irregularly conulose, with large smooth areas showing fields of pores. The consistency is rubbery, cheese-like and somewhat compressible.

The body is relatively symmetrical, with a large central cavity that in many species, opens to the outside through a sieve formed from the skeleton.

The secretion of spicules is carried out by sclerocytes. Other cells, called spongocytes, secrete the spongin skeletat fibres when those are present.

Pinacocytes are flattened cells containing many granules; capable of contracting. They are involved in the maintenance of the size and structure of sponge. They can expand and contract to slightly alter the size of the sponge and can also produce collagen.

Each tube can reach up to 50 centimeters in murky water and up to 30 centimeters in clear water. They arise from one common base and grow in clumps of around 20 columns. They may fuse for the first 10 to 20 centimeters but they do not branch.

Archaeocytes are amoeba-like cells that are totipotent, in other words each is capable of transformation into any other type of cell. They also have important roles in feeding and in clearing debris that block the ostia.

Most sponges are hermaphrodites (function as both sexes simultaneously), although sponges have no gonads (reproductive organs). Sperm are produced by choanocytes or entire choanocyte chambers that sink into the mesohyl and form spermatic cysts while eggs are formed by transformation of archeocytes, or of choanocytes in some species.

Adult sponges lack neurons or any other kind of nervous tissue. However most species have the ability to perform movements that are coordinated all over their bodies, mainly contractions of the pinacocytes, squeezing the water channels and thus expelling excess sediment and other substances that may cause blockages.

This species survives well in a home aquarium environment in a temperature ranging from 68 to 79°F (20-26°C). It needs to be a place with a low light level and moderate water flow. These sponges feed on the plankton and suspended detritus. In order to survive, they need numerous feedings per day.