Mushroom died.....brown jelly?

[clearerphish]

I have a nano with a lone mushroom, it came off its rock and was floating free, so I re-aquascaped and got it a little crevice. It had folded in half but the colors were still vibrant, so I hoped it would recover, but this morning it's folded up and crooked and there is brownish grey goo coming out the side of it. It's hard to tell since its tightly folded up, but it looks a bit like the color has faded...

I have read of mushrooms reproducing this way and I've also read of brown jelly disease. It's just one tiny little mushroom.

Should I remove it or play a wait and see kind of game? If it is brown jelly, will it harm my tank? - there are no other corals in there, just a few inverts at the moment and my water params are spot-on.

This is the view of the 'shroom from the front of the tank, you can see the goo to the left:

And a view from the side of the tank, to see how scrunched up the 'shroom is:

(sorry about the strand of macro that floated in the way at the "perfect" time.)

 

[Sadielynn]

it is hard to say it looks like it just detached and is not happy at the moment but the pictures are hard to see ... however yes if it is brown jelly it will likely affect the whole tank if you are able to set up a QT with light and some rock rubble place it into a cup with more rubble and it attaches then move it back to the main tank.... set up the QT much like your main tanke IE the filter , power head , lighting, and some rock in a cup for it to attach to ... Use water from your display so that you dont need to worry about a cycle the tank does not need to be huge to do this in just a small 1-2 gallon bin , bucket or tank . HTH

 

[Scoot]

I had this happen recently. Same circumstances. Two of the 3 shrooms on the rock where it was happening detached and relocated. One, I think, disintigrated, although it might have moved somewhere else.

I siphoned out all the jelly stuff, and also took the rock itself out and soaked it in a batch of Lugol's. That was almost a month ago and I havent' seen any of it return, or any other mushrooms affected.

 

[clearerphish]

Final edit - mushroom died. I siphoned out all brown jelly, it was attached to the mushroom. Looks like I got it all out.

now it's just a reef tank, not a coral reef tank.

 

[melosu58]

Hopefully if it was brown jelly then you took care of it but I do know that I have hundreds of mushrooms in my tank and have sold hundreds of them and they all came from one mushroom and everyone of them came from some greyish jelly that leaked from the parent mushroom and later a small mushroom came from it. I would say most of the time the jelly that comes from mushrooms is not bad. These are ancestors of that one mushroom. All of them giving off a jelly that would move down the rock.

 

[clearerphish]

Thanks for the info melosu. This jelly was actually "melting" the coral. It actually looked like it was turning into two shrooms at first, but as the day wore on you could see it dissolving into the brown jelly, and when I finally called it and decided to siphon it out, what came out was clear that the mushroom was dead. I'm not surprised - when it was floating free I put it into a crevice in the rock and I may have damaged the tissues resulting in the brown jelly. I'll be more careful with my next shroom. And I'll buy an epoxy stick.

 

[melosu58]

I got mine to stick by taking a thin fishing line and tying the mushroom lightly but firmly around a big piece of LR. In a few weeks it will be attached to the rock and start producing other mushrooms. When you go back to get more look for mushrooms that are already attached to a rock and you`ll have less problems. Good Luck.

 

[Scoot]

Melosu - does that bubble coral bother the shrooms at all? There's a beautiful bubble coral, a large one, at a LFS for cheap that I've been eyeing.

 

[melosu58]

So far so good. They`ve been there for two + yrs now. Just make sure you have some space as the bubble does have sweeper tentacles.

 

[Scoot]

I know - I had a tiny one that hitchhiked on LR, but it was destroyed by my parrotfish (that's why I don't have LPS or SPS).

Sorry for the threadjack