What's wrong with my mushrooms?

trigger05 · #1 08/12/2006, 05:46 PM

I bought some mushrooms about a month ago and they looked like this.......

Now they look like this.....

I think that the one under the red arrow is dead and the one under the blue arrow is about to die.
I want to know why. Out of the seven that i started with, 5 are seriously shrivelled up and 2 are doing fine.

What happened??

Sk8r · #2 08/12/2006, 09:18 PM

How is your alkalinity? I note you have a fluval: have you tested for ammonia? Temperature? Lighting? All these things can affect them. They look a little as if they might be suffering from too much light. But the shriveling could be ammonia or alk problem or ph.

trigger05 · #3 08/13/2006, 01:04 AM

i havent tested for anything but i will say that my green star polyps have been doing fine. also i do a 20% water change every 2 weeks and i clean out the filter media also.

So what could i do to correct this?

bblumberg · #4 08/18/2006, 01:34 AM

Try dosing iodine....

bigScott · #5 08/19/2006, 08:04 AM

check your lvls first, i got many mushrooms..an ive never dosed wit iodine..

wds21921 · #6 08/19/2006, 09:01 AM

Not all of your animals have the same requirements, it would be nice if they did but then they'd all look the same lol.

Levels and lighting are the first two things I'd look at. Usually with bleaching though they tend to get whiter features.

PJSEA · #7 08/19/2006, 09:16 AM

Make sure they don't see too much flow. My experience is that they don't like a lot of flow.

keckles · #8 08/19/2006, 10:25 AM

Did you take the second picture while the lights were off? (That is how it appears to my untrained eye) The polyps will naturally become smaller and lose coloration at night. A better comparison would have been to see them under the same lighting conditions.

If the picture was taken while the lights were on, move the mushrooms closer to the light because that seems like a very dim aquarium.

(Yes, I know the bright flash of a camera can overpower the aquarium light. But, it looks like the flash is the only thing providing light in the picture to me.)

trigger05 · #9 08/20/2006, 02:15 PM

Actually both pictures were taken with the aquarium lights on. The one with the shrivelled shrooms were taken with the flash on however.

I think it was the photoperiod that screwed them up. I used to leave the lights on for about 10 hrs a day. I have reduced the photoperiod now. Also, they get no strong currents.

swhedbee · #10 08/22/2006, 10:57 AM

trigger05,

I've never had any luck with the green mushrooms like in your photos. The shrinking is caused by the mushroom consuming its own body because of a net loss of nutrients (food).

Photosynthesis only supplies simple sugars. Animals need food (proteins) to grow, repair, reproduce, etc.

I "chum" my tank heavily once a day and there are lots of filtering feeding worms, q-tip sponges, etc.

My tank is bare-bottom and my euroreef skimmer fills the cup once every 2 or 3 days. I also have chaeto growing.

I'm guessing that the tank does not have enough nutrients to support the green mushrooms. I have other types of mushrooms that are doing okday. The blue mushrooms have reproduced (slowly). The rhodactis (hairy mushrooms) are doing well.

I see so many of those green mushrooms rocks at the LFS and they have that "aquacultured" look (Not much life on the rock besides the coral). I've always wondered how the aquaculture source can grow them so quickly. Maybe they are using raw sewage water....

-Sam