mushrooms detaching

[ufotofu]

I've got a rock with lots of small to medium green mushrooms on it, and the ones that were not upright and in direct lighting have decided to detach themselves from the rock. I managed to salvage 3 of them, another fell down in the center of the reef and another I'm pretty sure is toast from floating around and getting banged up.

All water parameters look good. I moved the rock down to the bottom of the tank just in case it was getting too much light. One thing I've noticed is that most of the mushrooms aren't as open and fully spread out as they were at the LFS tank. They were running 5500K MH lamps so they looked brownish. In my tank they look green - slightly tan. I've got then under a 250W 10,000K MH with 4 24W Ocean Blue T5s.

Anyone else ever experience this problem? Solution(s)? You can see the mushrooms in my tank build thread below.

 

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I've had issue like that too.. what you can do is tooth pick them to a rock. They'll attach, or if you have a low flow area, you can press/wedge them in and in a few days they'll reattach. Some people here hate mushrooms because of their ability to spread by detaching and going elsewhere in the tank.

 

[Len]

You might need to do a water change. Usually, when mushrooms detach from the rocks, they're not happy about water conditions. I can't say for sure what the problem is, but water changes are usually effective.

 

[TheJGMProject]

i experienced this with one large mushroom I have. I'm pretty sure mine detached and floated to another rock because it wasn't satisfied with the lighting and flow of the nano I formally had. From my experience, mushrooms detach to find a more suitable living condition.

 

[ufotofu]

Hmmmm...I just did a 10% water change yesterday. All the usual suspects are in pretty good shape. Nitrates the only one not zero, and it's at 5.0ppm. My pH has been kind of high the past week or so. I've been dosing Kent TechAB to raise the alk and calcium levels. Maybe I had it too high up and it was a lighting issue like you say. I've moved the rock down to the bottom of the tank about an inch or so off the sand. The remaining mushrooms seem to be doing well there. Only time will tell, though.

I can't help thinking lighting and current are the culprits. They were in a high location with a little current, and the ones that flopped off seem to have been receiving the majority of the turbulence due to their location on the rock. I only had them 'out in the sun' because I read the green ones really like intense lighting.

Here's the latest pic of the rock. Do these look like distressed mushrooms to you? Just noticed the Xenia has started multiplying already. Tiny 3 tentacle clone forming up behind the others. Hammer coral is extended as far as I think can with great coloration. But these darned mushrooms won't behave! Oh well, check the pic and tell me if you see anything like coralimorphs dialing 911 or signaling SOS.

 

[ufotofu]

Another one detached just now. I wouldn't mind the detachment so much if I knew they were actually drifting to a better location and settling in. However, from what I've seen they are drifting with the current and ending up in the back of a cave or way underneath the live rock with little to no light and only sand and other bits as substrate. I guess I just have to let go and let them find their way, huh?