sponge on a stick picks up lava?. should just the magmatic one do that

Config option added in 5.1, allowing hot fluid is enabled by default and can be disabled via the new config option.

would it be possible to have a config for that setting? as its absorbs ALL other fluids

This is intentional. Regular sponges / sponge on a stick are meant to only absorb lava once, then breaks. The magmatic variant just allows the sponges to be reused on lava.

Possibly, I'll have to look into adding a config option to not allow regular sponges absorb hot fluids like lava.

thanks :)