Marine sponges contain many structurally diverse bioactive compounds and are the best marine bio-resources for pharmaceutical development.But the "supply issue" of sponge material hampers their commercial production.Several strategies were proposed to resolve the supply issue. In situ sponge aquaculture was marked as one of the most reliable strategies after decades of studies.In this paper,we reviewed cases of in situ sponge aquaculture in the past 20 years and summarized important factors of the strategy,including the attaching methods,feeding,sizes of the explants,flow rates and suspending depths.The main points are:1.explants should be securely fixed; 2.feeding canals should be unobstructed; 3.rich POC with size<8μm in farming areas; 4.water flow should be moderate; 5.explant size should be moderate; 6.appropriate light; 7.some bioactive products are sensitive to circumstance.Most of the cases showed that farming operations had little influence on the accumulation of bioactive compounds.Our progresses in this field suggested that it is feasible to scale up in situ sponge aquaculture in our country to resolve the supply issue.We also presented three problems that would be encountered in the future:1.transplanting between areas with large environmental variations; 2.diseases and predators; 3.breeding of sexual propagated progenies.