mushrooms melting away!

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

mandown123

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Mar 5, 2008
Messages
329
Location
Staten Island, NY
Hi guys. Got one for the gurus.

Tank is going good, so I bought a rock with some neat ricordea and other mushrooms i cant ID (can't find the exact ones). Well, the ricordea is doing awesome, but these green neonish mushrooms are melting away and their flesh is just dying! SUCKS!

I just tested my levels right now:

pH - 8.0
Alk - 2.5
trIte - 0
trAte - 0
Ammo - 0
SG - 1.022 - 1.023

I didn't realize my alklinity dropped slightly from where it was a few weeks ago, also pH went down .2

Is this killing the poor little guys? They looked very healthy when i got them honestly. I don't think the lighting is the problem, as they are mushies. The ricordea is flourishing, it has clearly grown since i got it, but the others are bleaching out and they are dying with fuzzy patches appearing where the skin is dying and all that. Very sucky, again!

What do you think - is the Alk to blame? How can I remedy?

P.S. i ordered phos and calc test kits but they haven't come yet
 
actually trate is closer to 10. It took longer to show up on the test, i just left the water in the tube and came back and its 10 now. Still, 10 isnt THAT bad. These mushies are really looking like theyve had a rough time. Probably wont live no matter what I do, but the others can be saved! lol
 
If that alk is 2.5 meq/l, it's only a little low and shouldn't be any problem. If it's 2.5 dKH, then it is really low. If you have any coralline algea, LPS or SPS in your tank, they use up alk, calcium and magnesium, so it's not unusual that your alk dropped.

Mushrooms for the most part are pretty indestructable. All I can suggest of do a few 25% pwc's as they never hurt. I would raise the SG to about 1.025 while you're doing the pwc's.

What lighting do you have and what brand salt do you use?
 
cccapt - i thought they were indestructable too, thats why I figured it would be a great piece of rock to buy as my first non fish growth. Not the case here for some reason.

I will do another PWC wednesday when I have time, I just hope they can survive that long... they dont look good.

Salt is reef crystals

Lighting I have a cheap T5 4x39watt, but i only have a 30 gallon 16" deep and they are at mid level. In the store they were under MH but at the wayyy bottom of a decently tall display shelf tank

it is a new tank but I believe I have noticed some red coralline growth, maybe that dropped it. No crazy growth though, everything is kinda where it was when i put it in give or take. Don't know if it is noteworthy but i do have somewhat of a hair algae problem, but I think I have turned the tide of the battle.
 
Are there any other corals near the mushrooms? Are the ricordeas really close or touching the mushrooms? If so, try breaking the rock and moving them apart from each other and see if that helps.
 
the ricordia is right next to one of them, but it looked good in the store and the one next to the ric is hangig on the longest so far. just tested my phosphates at somewhere between .2 and .4 (cheap kit) I put in a phos eater filter pad.water change tomorrow and then ive done all i can do.
 
If it looked good in the store, maybe it didn't have enough time to be affected by the ric or their flow and filtration is a lot better than yours?

Just saying, mushrooms are infamous for their chemical warfare issues and I've had mushrooms kill other corals before and I've had ricordeas and mushrooms combat each other. Might not hurt to atleast try if you've tried everyting else, because like was mentioned, mushrooms are pretty much indestructible.

HTH :)
 
can i like physically remove the mushroom it self and try to plant it somewhere else? will that work? it seems so weak and helpless that i dont know that it would even take if such a thing were possible. the ricordia part that is near the other mushroom is like a little whitish on the edge. maybe it is chemical warfare, but is the poison of a ric far reaching enough to kill the mushrooms on the entire rock??? The one right next to it is lasting the longest
 
Yeah, I've seen folks pull shrooms up and move them. Get it by the stalk and gently pull, it will release and you can place it elsewhere. If I remember correctly, you can put it on a rock with no flow and it will attach (I think).
 
Maybe. The fact that it is white indicates there is some sort of battle going on.

If you can't break the rock apart (you can take the mushrooms out of water for quite a while if you need to) then a really sharp razor blade can be used to cut it off. Only problem with that is that unless you cut into the rock too, there will still be flesh of the mushroom left on the rock and a new mushroom can bud off of that.
 
Maybe I will try to remove it later. I hope it would reattach, but I guess it is good to try instead of letting it wither.

Do you really think the white on the edge of the ricordea is indicitive of a chem battle?

25% PWC maybe will help, which I will do today or tomorrow.
 
I agree with Lindsay. Take the rock out of the tank to work on it. I use a large bowl to hold it while it's out of the tank. Then remove the rock, cut the mushroom at teh base where it's attached. I use bridal veil to hold it against a piece of rock rubble or another small rock. I either rubberband the bridal veil or crazy glue it to the rock. All goes back into the tank. Place in an area of low flow. You can remove the bridal veil in about 2 weeks and the mushroom should have attached.

What kind of flow is it getting now? I had some shrooms shrivel when a ph was moved and they got too much flow. Some detached and attached in another part of the tank. Some just shriveled up. Where once there was one, now there are several colonies.
 
they arent getting too much flow. They barely move.

hmm... cmor - how would I attach the mush to the veil itself? Gee all of this seems like kinda complicated to me lol I am a newbie but am willing to try.
 
You don't want to attach the shroom to the veil itself, but rather use the veil to hold it down. Like glue on the outsides of the veil or rubberband the outsides of the veil. I've found supergluing the mushroom right to a rock works too, though is a bit more "invasive" then the veil method. Or, you can try and chisel away a piece of rock that the mushroom is attached to and just relocate the piece of rock by gluing it down directly.
 
Linday of course is right. But I have had trouble gluing a shroom directly to a rock. They never stick for me :(
 
just an update... those mushrooms all died, grew fuzzy, and fell off.

the big mushroom is growing huge very quickly though. i wish i could say i learned something from this experience lol but it pretty much is still a mystery to me
 
Back
Top Bottom