white mushroom

[Aaron1100us]

I saw a pure white mushroom at the lfs the other day. I'm assuming it lost its zooxanthella. It is in a 15 gallon tank with one NO light. Shrooms are low light and you'd think it would be able to survive under that kind of lighting. You'd also think that it would die and shrivel up before it turned pure white. Anyone ever seen a shroom like that? What do you think happened to it? Or is it some kind of freak mushroom? It is about the size of a quarter. Very wierd.

[dwarfatize]

I have seen a mushroom that was all white. I was new to the hobby so I bought it thinking "stupid LFS not knowing what a rare color mushroom they have." And now it is doing just fine in my 37 gallon reef tank.

[Aaron1100us]

How long have you had it? Do you feed it? It is pure white? If this is some kind of odd mushroom, I might have to buy it but it sure looks like it just lost all its zooxanthella. Do you have a picture of yours?

[lemmiwinks]

a friends tank has several completely white mushrooms. we are not sure what their origional colour is (he has many different kinds of mushies) but they are generally the ones that are not getting enough light, either because they have found spot with no light or because mushrooms surrounding them inflate when the lights are on, blocking all light from the whitie. they have been in his tank for many months now, not growing or reducing in size.

[Aaron1100us]

Interesting. That must be really low light for a shroom to loos its zooxanthella

[dchisenh]

The only bleached white mushrooms I've seen are ones that are in the display tank at my LFS. They were normal red mushrooms they have had for years, but when they upgraded their lighting from 1 6500K MH (don't know the old one's wattage) to two newer 10,000K pendants (I think the new ones are 175 or 250's...can't remember which) a lot of the shrooms bleached and still haven't regained their color. Haven't seen any bleaching because of too little light before. They're hardy little corals, though.

-Dan

[serial reefer]

I have a white one that settled under the rocks after it detached itself, it seems to be doing fine under there, it just doesn't have any color :cool:

[Aaron1100us]

Cool, how long have you had it? Do you feed it?

[lemmiwinks]

Originally posted by Aaron1100us
Interesting. That must be really low light for a shroom to loos its zooxanthella

its not that he does not have good enough lights on his tank (6ftX2ftX2ft with 2 MH and 4 actinic) its the position the mushroom has found.

Originally posted by dchisenh
They were normal red mushrooms
yeah my friends tank has red mushrooms, the white ones are similar in shape so i think they were red