i cant keep mushrooms

[meadow]

ok i have no clue why i can keep other corals but the most easiest of all i cant get to live
all my mushrooms always shrivel up and die
i have star polyps, zoa's, candycanes, yellow polyps, toadstool and a big ball of macro algae all doing great, but all my shrooms are shriveling
i dont get it...is it my lighting?
i have 2x40 pc lights, 10 gallon nano, the temps have been a little high since were having a heat wave, its about 82-83
specific gravity is 1.025, ph 8.3
i do weekly water changes
i dont have a calcium or alkaline test yet, i will buy one tho
amonia and nitrates are zero
last month i went 3 weeks without a water change and the shrooms puffed up and finally looked good, then i started my weekly 10% changes again and they look worse than ever

 

[jenniferjeter]

It's just one of those things. In some tanks they go crazy and other they don't. I have heard and repeat (heard)they like the dirtier water or at least handle better than other softies and corals.

 

[saltank]

Shrooms can have issues under pc lighting (refer to vol. 2 of Sprung and Delbeek's Coral Reefkeeping book)

It is due to an excessive buildup of a chemical compound in their tissue due to the type of lighting - I think it has to do with the UV wavelength present in the pc lighting; or something like that...

Anyhow on my 1st tank I could not get shrooms to stay alive; they were under 110w pc lighting, I used tapwater in that tank. They would expand when the lights would first come on but eventually shrivel from it.

My current tank is also under pc lighting (110w + 96w) but I use RO water and shrooms have grown quite well - I don't know if the water is the entire difference though b/c I have had ricordea shrivel up on me. I think it has more to do with pc lighting and placement of the shrooms.

Try moving them to where they will get more indirect light/ partial shade to see if that helps. It was a mystery to me also...

 

[Anonymous]

I have also read that they like iodine. I think there are some other trace elements they need that are replenished through water changes.


I had them decline when I did no water changes for a long time...as if there was something depleted in the water that they needed. When I started doing some regular water changes again, they came back and multiplied again.

 

[meadow]

they dont like pc lighting meaning its too dim? they need it brighter? or less light?
that would explain why the runaway shroom behind the rock is getting huge and gave birth lol

i used to add iodine in a buffer a+b
i stopped using it since my starpolyps hated it, they would close for days after i added it
now i just do the weekly water changes, all are happy except the shrooms
ahh cant please em all :roll:

 

[Anonymous]

they dont like pc lighting meaning its too dim? they need it brighter? or less light?
that would explain why the runaway shroom behind the rock is getting huge and gave birth lol

i used to add iodine in a buffer a+b
i stopped using it since my starpolyps hated it, they would close for days after i added it
now i just do the weekly water changes, all are happy except the shrooms
ahh cant please em all :roll:

I think it is a spectrum thing...not a brighness thing.


But that is anecdotal. I run PC lights and I have had mushrooms mutiply to plague proportions...and I have also had them die off en mass. So for me, the PC lighting was not a factor at all.

 

[Newportreefer]

I had them growing like crazy under PC lighting where I lived before. The water there was very hard. Here the water is softer but higher in iron. The alga grow like crazy. I got some rather plain looking shrooms from the marine science center here. In the public display they are growing like crazy. Huge and taking over their tank. Here they are doing very little. in my larger tank under MH 10K lighting I have some furry shrooms they seem to be okay but not growing by leaps and bounds. (I use tap water cuz RO/DI is out of my price range!)

 

[Anonymous]

lighting intensity. Mine did crappy until I noticed that they were doing well behind the rocks. I put some macro algae in the tank that was blocking/filtering the light to them and now I have thousands. 80watts of pc is a lot for a 10G IMHO. I see the same thing for zooanthids in my 10G. I have one 32W PC over my 10G Zoo tank.

 

[meadow]

could it be the quality of shroom?
i notice all the mushrooms i bought through mail order are the ones im having trouble with.
i have one mushroom rock that i bought locally several months ago and that seems to be ok and thriving.
i think ill try more mushrooms but not from online sources, maybe they dont ship well? or are just bad stock?
unless its just coincidental