Ircinia campana

(Lamarck, 1814)

Stinking Sponge

Range: Atlantic Ocean: Florida, Caribbean, Bahamas, and Colombia to Brazil.

Natural Environment: Inhabits rubble near mangrove areas.

Aquarium Suitability: Not collected for the home aquarium trade.

Best left in the wild.

Taxonomy:

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Porifera

Class: Demospongiae

Subclass: Keratosa

Order: Dictyoceratida

Family: Irciniida

Genus: Ircinia

FYI: Shown here for identification purpose only.

These sponges smell very bad if removed from the water and serve no useful purpose in aquaria. Yields a strong anti-feeding chemical to withstand being fed upon by fishes.

Sponges posses no nervous, digestive or excretory systems, and feed by filtering suspended bacteria and fine detritus. Strong water movement is vital to almost all, not only for carrying food to these sessile creatures but also to carry waste/unused matter away. In fact, a sponge the size of a baseball can filter about fifty gallons of water per hour!