No luck with mushrooms, why?

I'm probably in the minority, but I love mushrooms. The problem is I dont seem to have any luck in keeping them alive in my tank. The hilariously frustrating thing about this is that all I read online is that they are pretty much indestructible and it actually takes an effort on your part to kill them.

I've had a colony of red and green shrooms, I believe discoma is the species, that only has a single red shroom on it now. I also had a big colony of brownish, red shrooms which are all dead-except for maybe 2.

The other day, I decided to give it another go and bought a small rock of blue shrooms. I dont think they're doing too well, they don't look as good as they did at the LFS.



I have other corals in the tank that are doing fine-bubbles, hammers, frogspawn, brain, anthelia, etc.


my tank is a 90 gal corner tank. Im using a 36-48 in marine land reef capable fixture, 2 ecoxotic stunner strips, and 2 LED strips from my LFS that don't have a brand. I had 2 1400 koralia in either corner alternating for 1 minute. But the one on the right causes my bubble corals to close up, so i have it turned off for now.

I've tried different places in my tank-At the very bottom, mid level, somewhat shaded between other rocks, etc. Just cant seem to make this work.

Any ideas as to whats going on?

cpetrosky said:

well for one that light is a POS IME, the spectrum is just wrong. by the looks of the photo the xenia on the rock in the bottom left isint looking too happy either. Ive found lack of iodine to be a problem with alot of softies in the past as well. Might be worth looking into.

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Yeah, I've heard that the marineland fixtures suck pretty bad. I thought I'd be alright since I added the stunners and the other 2 LED strips. The xenia(? was told it was gsp) was like that when I got it. Was basically just trying to see if I could bring it back or not. Zoos are considered softies as well aren't they? I've noticed in general, I've just had trouble with these while my lps seem to be okay. Will def look into idiodine levels. Here's my brain

TL1000RSquid said:

I agree about it possibly being lighting, I don't think the stunners are that bad but I wouldn't use them as a standalone lighting unless I had quite a few of them.. They make decent supplemental lighting to MH or T5's though.

I have green shrooms im trying to eradicate i hate how they look. Those blue ones looks nice though.

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At this point, I'll take any kind of shroom growth in my tank lol. Would love it if these blue ones took off

SubRosa said:

If you add up all the money that you spent buying all of those assorted light fixtures you probably could have bought 2 of the 120W Taotronics units that are all over ebay and lighting wouldn't be an issue for anything you wanted to keep.

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Yes

coyotethug said:

How clean is your tank? I have always found that mushrooms do well in relatively nutrient water compared to stony corals. Do they shrivel like that always. That is usually a sign of being unhappy. Too much light maybe too, they like it on the dim side compared to most especially at the beginning. Once they are good and happy you can slowly move them up to increase growth and reproduction rate.

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Well the last time I did a trate test, it came out within normal range. I do a 10 gal waterchange every week with a 20 thrown in here and there. Yesterday, I moved them to a spot that you cannot directly see from the front of the tank. It's sort of behind a higher rock. I dont think I'm imagining it, but it looks like they already perked up a bit-maybe a combination from being out of direct light and mostly sheltered from flow

greech said:

Pretty much the only way you can kill shrooms (other than a blow torch) is too much light. Shrooms can live in ambient room lighting from lamps or overhead fixtures. While I agree that the Marineland lighting and the stunners should in no way considered to be be "too much" lighting, I would be interested to know what the other two unknown fixtures are putting out.

I also agree with shrooms and softies being (more) tolerant of of elevated nutrients, however based on the pics provided, you seem to have a somewhat nutrient rich tank as it stands currently. I mean no offense by that but there is clearly some decent alage/cyano growth that has to be fueled by something.

Zoanthids are considered soft corals. Inability to keep those is not shocking as many people have the same problem. IMO, zoas can be more finicky that acros.

Chemical warfare may be part of the problem. Are you running carbon?

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The other 2 fixtures are LED strips(I think my LFS has them custom made or something because they dont have a brand name on package). One is 3 ft the other is 2 ft. There's 9 1-watt LEDs per ft. The 3 footer is 10k white and the 2 footer is acitinic.

And no offense taken . I'm not sure why I am having this algea problem. My lights come on for 9 hours a day. I dont feed my fish more than what they finish in about 30 seconds to 1 minute. There was a period of about a month where I slacked on water changes, but it's been about 2 months since then with religious water changes...

I'm only running a small chunk of carbon. It's only rated for 60 gallons and my tank is 90. Should I grab another part?