Moody Mushrooms

[AquaSquid]

I have in my 12 gal 2 types of mushrooms. The normal smooth green striated shrooms and another rock with hairy or tentacled surface. The smooth shrooms are doing great and have even reproduced. The rough ones are half the size they were when I got them. A few of them have gone from the size of a golf ball to the size of a dime. Water parameters are excellent. Lighting is around 3.75 watts per gallon. This decline has been slowly progressing for @ 3 months. Two or three start to look like they are rebounding but then recede? What's going on?

[dakar]

How much flow is on the frilly shrooms? We've found they prefer low current but higher lighting to do really well.

[AquaSquid]

You may have nailed it. I remember now that I changed the direction of my filter outflow to point down more into the tank so that it wasn't so noisy at night. It points almost directly at the frilly shroom rock! Thanks I'll make the change and let you know.

[Reef_Angel]

Those hairy mushrooms love to be fed! Generally they are fed brine shrimp from a baster once or twice a week. If you touch a hairy mushroom, you'll notice they have a stickyness about their frills! This helps them to hod on to food given to them by hand, or what they can get out of the watercolumn. To much flow is definitly a problem with them. Ours will pick up and move to a new rock. It's kind of funny really. It does sound like you might want to do a little handfeedingif you feed your other coral, or make sure you wave some cyclopeeze around them so they are getting the required nutrition. Hope this helps! Good luck! ....Angel :angel2:

[Whoyah]

I have also noticed a dramatic change in my mushroom since I started dosing iodine. They are puffed and pretty now. Before they we just kind of there.

[AquaSquid]

I do feed my corals 3-4x week with a turkey baster. I use invert food mixed with mysis shrimp, as well as spray dried plankton. I also dose 1xweek with Marine snow. I shut off all flow to the filters for 10 minutes so that the food has a chance to circulate in the tank before it's sucked out. One interesting thing on the rock is this. The area that used to be covered by the mushrooms is now taken up by what looks like small fragile trees. They are white and branched and collect Lot's of plankton when I feed the tank. They don't retract when sprayed by the turkey baster like tube worms. I'm not sure if they are inhibiting the shrooms or are just taking advantage of a little open real estate.

[AquaSquid]

Whoyah, is there a test kit available for iodine? I almost never dose with anything I can't measure.

[dakar]

Most of the better test kit makes have one... Here's the one we use, mutli-test jobber from sea-chem, it's also available from them for just iodine/iodide.
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Produc...fm?pcatid=4404

[Whoyah]

I am using the same kit Dakar suggested (SeaChem) for iodine. Works ok. Its one of those you have judge how blue is this blue. NSW is .06 ppm. The shrooms and zoas really like it. Very noticeable in my tank. I was at zero when I started.

[jerryc]

Flow defiantly will do away with them i had one kind getting out of hand in
my tank. But that was before i had the flow i have at this time as Thea or
slowly going away. And that is alright with me as Thea where like weeds