My Mushrooms won't grow...

[rdb1357]

I have 6 blue green mushrooms, nut only two of them are open and colorful. The other 4 are small and dull in color. I have a carbon filter that the LFS said would remove any toxins that might be bothering the other ones. I have had them for 4 months abd they have not grown at all. All my levels are good and The LFS slao said to add iodine one a week for them, so I check the iodine levels and then add it to make sure there is not too much. This is a new tank, my first tank, it is 30 gallons with 28 lbs of LR and 15 lbs of LS. Two small fish, 12 hermit crabs and 6 snails. I also have some button polyps and zoanthus polyps. Any tips?

[MMM33732]

Whats your lighting like? Most mushrooms don't require much light, but they seem to grow much faster under good lighting.

[rdb1357]

The tank is a Ocean Bio-Cube with built in lights. They are Coralife 10,000k 36 watt, and a actinic 36 watt light. I have the rock they are growing on sitting on the sand near a large piece of LR. I did have closer to the light, but moved it further away now.

[rhythmicfire]

Maybe you just need to give them some time? Some mushrooms do tend to grow slower than others. I've never heard of anyone dosing iodine for mushrooms...

[rdb1357]

I stopped the iodine due to another post. From what I read, I thought that mushroooms had a tendency to grow somewhat fast and I have nothing new in 4 months, and 4 of them are very small and almost white, while 2 of them look normal. Does that sound okay, or do I need to do something?

[MMM33732]

When you say almost white, do you mean kind of transparent?

[bigScott]

if thier white thier bleached..

[John Zillmer]

I've had good results dosing iodine for corallimorpharians. Also, they grow faster in older, dirtier tanks with high bioloads.

[rdb1357]

They are not all white, just on the edges. They are greenish in the middle and half the size of a dime, while the other two are very green and a little bigger than a quarter. What is a bioload?

[John Zillmer]

'Bioload' is, roughly, the amount of livestock in the system. More fish and inverts = more bioload.

Mushrooms (Actinodiscus species especially) feed by direct nutrient absorption, so the more nutrients in the water, the more the mushrooms have to eat. (Other genera such as Ricordea and Rhodactis feed also on macroscopic foods.)

[MMM33732]

Its pretty much always a good idea to feed phytoplankton or micro-vert to tanks with corals as most corals eat it.

[rhythmicfire]

Originally posted by John Zillmer
Mushrooms (Actinodiscus species especially) feed by direct nutrient absorption, so the more nutrients in the water, the more the mushrooms have to eat. (Other genera such as Ricordea and Rhodactis feed also on macroscopic foods.)

Wow, I learned something new today!

[John Zillmer]

Regarding MMM's claims:

Not sure what 'most' means, exactly, but two points:

There are corals that eat phyto exclusively, and then there are corals that are indiscriminate between consuming phyto or zooplankton, and then there are corals (Fungiids, Mussids, and similar) that virtually never eat phyto. So phyto is not nutritionally relevant to some commonly kept corals.

Further, since prey size and composition are important to the capture rates of corals such as leathers and softies, products made of ground fish meals and egg yolks are not going to benefit these animals.

[blide]

inverts = more bioload

I don't think inverts count...

(Other genera such as Ricordea and Rhodactis feed also on macroscopic foods.)

Ricordea are photosynthetic..

[John Zillmer]

Originally posted by blide
(I don't think inverts count)

Ummm...why not? They eat, they poop...what difference does it make whether an animal has a backbone to the question of whether they have a biological impact on the carrying capacity of a system?

[John Zillmer]

Originally posted by blide
I don't think inverts count...



Ricordea are photosynthetic..

Well, strictly speaking, Rics are mixotrophic -- they get some energy from photosynthesis and some from active consuption/digestion. Just because an animal is photosythetic doesn't mean it does not eat.

[Lance M.]

Ricordea are more photosynthetic then say Rhodactis but they still require food from the water column whether it's zooplankton or larger foods. I read somewhere that Ricordea acquire up to 80% of their nutrition from the light and the rest from the water column. I forgot where I read that though.

[blide]

Yes, you're right I meant to say more photosynthetic.

Didn't mean to contradict just trying to point out from expierence ric's don't really need to be hand fed food and live off "poop". I have 3 fish in my tank and there's not enough "poop" to go around.

Here's my resume...

[Lance M.]

Very Nice blide. What type/amount of light do you have them under and at what depth roughly? And How often do you do pwcs and how long have they taken to fill in like that? Very nice setup.

FTS?

[MMM33732]

Originally posted by John Zillmer
Regarding MMM's claims:

Not sure what 'most' means, exactly, but two points:

There are corals that eat phyto exclusively, and then there are corals that are indiscriminate between consuming phyto or zooplankton, and then there are corals (Fungiids, Mussids, and similar) that virtually never eat phyto. So phyto is not nutritionally relevant to some commonly kept corals.

Further, since prey size and composition are important to the capture rates of corals such as leathers and softies, products made of ground fish meals and egg yolks are not going to benefit these animals.

Really now? I've always been told what I posted... By most I meant well... most. I suppose this could be wrong though now? Any articles to back this up?

[Lance M.]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think John is just trying to point out that different corals consume different size particles from the water column. Look at the side of the bottle on Phyto's and other planktonic foods and you'll usually see somewhere listed the particle size of the algae/plankton/microorganisms contained in there in microns. PhytoPlankton by Kent is 5-15 microns in size so it's very small and good for some corals but almost useless for others. ZooPlankton by Kent is 800 microns, much larger and the particles are easy to be filtered out of the water column by other corals. So some corals eat up Phytoplankton and some don't and some eat Zooplankton and some don't. Phytoplankton alone cannot satisfy all types of corals, neither can Zooplankton. That's why in a mixed reef it's recommended to feed several different sizes to satisfy all the corals but if you have a lps only tank or something like that then you can use a specific particle size that will benefit the coral the most.

[John Zillmer]

MMM33732, sorry if I came off like I was trying to pick a fight. I get itchy when people (and me myself) use words like 'most' because they can end up meaning whatever a person wants to sometimes...not that I think you intend to do this.

To back up my claims: a favorite reference of mine is Borneman's "Aquarium Corals", since he cites many peer-reviewed articles like this one from Sorokin's (1995) text published by Springer-Verlag, a respected academic publisher; Sorokin claims that "corals are possibly "the most-selective heterotrophic feeders in the animal kingdom"" (Borneman, p. 59).

On p. 58, Borneman writes "corals...are largely carnivorous, mostly (ha,ha) feeding on zooplankton" and in a discussion of phytoplankton "Stony corals almost always reject plant material as food, although a few have been found to ingest it in relatively small amounts."

Aside from such printed references, look at some corals -- a Turbinaria (pagoda), for instance. Judging by the polyp size, that animal eating 5ml of phyto wafting by in 100g of water is like me eating a teaspoon of sugar grains scattered throughout my house. Animals eat roughly mouth-sized things, so "LPS" eat things like mysis and I eat things like cheeseburgers.

Thanks, too, to Lance M. for helping me clarify.

[MMM33732]

Interesting. So then what does primarily eat phyto? I've always fed phyto to softies and LPS, but recently switched to Micro-Vert. Theres no particulate size listed on the Kent Micro-Vert bottle that I could find, but its not just plant material.

[John Zillmer]

Leathers (Sarcophyton especially comes to mind here, though that might just be because it is my favorite), and softies such as Cladiella (Colt), Lemnalia, and aposymbiotic Dendronephthea & Scleronepthea. garf.org's research into keeping these corals backs up the thought that the latter two genera are primarily phyto eaters.

[Lance M.]

MMM33732- I think you would be best feeding something like Marine Snow that has several different particle sizes. Or a combination of Micro-Vert, Zoo + Phyto but make sure not to overdose. What corals do you have? That would help you decide what to feed.

I think some or most (lol vague) pods eat phytoplankton.