Mushroom splitting?

[mandown123]

Hi guys. I have a mushroom, i think its an orange ricordea, but not 100% sure.

it got HUGE from when I bought it, and now it looks like in the front it actually like ripped a little, and my first reaction is that wow it must be splitting. It hasn't really developed much since then though as far as ripping further. I started target feeding it a little more shrimp every few days to hope to accelerate its growth.

Is this the case? does anyone have experience with this? How long would it usually take to complete a split?

Thanks! I should send a pic but I can't ever get good shots in my tank for some reason, and i have a decent camera too

[loyalrogue]

It's possible.
Normally a ricordia will develop another mouth(s) first which will slowly spread away from the original mouth before the ric splits into two (or more) seperate whole ricordia mushrooms.
Of course, just like all mushroom coral, if you want to help it along, you could just take a razorblade to it, and the two halves will heal into whole ricordias and develop new mouths.

[mandown123]

i'd be too afraid to kill it. All the ricordia yuma on the rock died shortly after me putting them in my tank. LOL im too happy with this one to mess it up. I'll wait, no real rush - just was curious.

I have been on the look out for another mouth cause i figured thats kind of an essential.

[pat8you]

I have ricordia florida and it took it a couple weeks to fully split. slow process but it gets there eventually.

[cccapt]

That's exactly how mine reproduce. The foot moves and leaves a little piece behind that becomes a mushroom. I never really watched to see how long from when it started to move till the 2 pieces were totally seperate, but I would guess a few weeks.