Steve, This is how I determined that the hitch hiking cukes that were in the Key's rock from liverock.com were shroom eaters: After I placed the 100 or so lbs of
LR into the tank, I let nature stabilize the tank. I left it alone for about a month to make sure that all levels were good. I then started to populate the top of the
LR wall with
shrooms attached to small pieces of
LR from my reef tank. These were good size pieces with about 5 to 10 heads on each piece. Over the course of a week, I added about 5 of these pieces of
LR with
shrooms attached. The
shrooms opened up and did well for the next few weeks, then they just started to shrivel up and disappear slowly over a course of about 2-3 weeks. I thought nothing of it, chalking it up to less than perfect water quality (nitrate & phosphates) due to the amount of fish in the
FOWLR setup.
I knew I had a hitch hiking tan/brown
cuke in the tank. I would see him late at night a few times. I even posted on the vendors forum asking if I should remove the
cuke. Liverocks.com said it was perfectly harmless & that they have them in their display tanks, so I left it.
So one day months later, I'm having some red algae problems in my Nano tank and the Gulf's rock is populated with the red tuffa like algae. I'm pruning this all the time so I decide that I'll let the Tangs in the
FOWLR have a go at it. This was in the late morning and the tanks are still dark but room lights are on. So I place two pieces of this rock straight into my
FOWLR. The Gulf's rock has large growths of the red algae and a few
shrooms on it. I go back to working on the Nano. About an hour later as I'm passing the
FOWLR tank, I notice the
cuke is out which is weird cause it never comes out when there is any lights on either in the room or tank. I see this guy coming down the glass towards the 2 pieces of
LR that I had placed on the sandbed. Then I notice that there is a second
cuke that I have never seen before It was near one of the
LR pieces that I had placed in the tank. I decided that I didn't like the idea of the
cuke possibly going into that piece of
LR and being transported back to my Nano, so I put my arm in to move the rock and the
cuke moves with the rock. I said great, he's already going in. I pick up the rock and I see him attached to a shroom that is disfigured. He would not let go, I had to shake him off. While doing this, the original
cuke had made his way to the second piece of
LR and was starting to munch on a shroom also. I said SOB, that's what happened to all my other
shrooms in this tank.
So that's my shroom eating
cuke story. Needless to say, the two cukes are out of my tank for now.