Leather Toadstool Issue

G

Gildurath

AC Members
May 12, 2007
162
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0
Thunder Bay, Ontario
Hello,
One of my leather toadstools is very big, and it seems to be trying to move to a better lightplace. It is currently bridging over from 1 LR to another. It basically laid down, and has attached further up the stem, and now the part of the stem connected to the old rock is slowly turning white and deteriorating. Parts of this white have broken off, they are flakey white stuff, and floated and landed on my moon coral, and killed the polyps they landed in.

I am guessing it is trying to move closer to my light source. I have a MH, I think the bulb is old, in the centre of a 55g TALL tank, the leather is off to the left.

Does this make sense that it would try to move?

If not, what is causing it to deteriorate?

Is there anything I can do to stop the deterioration in either case?

Thanks for any suggestions:

My current Params are:
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Phosphate: 0ppm
Nitrate: 10-15ppm (I had been overfeeding so my new blenny had lots of algae to eat, but he is now eating seaweed)
Salinity: 1.023
Temp: 80-84 (It has been hard to keep it constant lately)
 
Id bump up your SG to .25, Has the toadstool been handled alot ie touching it w/ hands and moving it all around the tank. Toadstools realease a toxin and that is why you moon coral was affected.
 
Do you use carbon?It will help decrease toxins that stressed,dying,or aggressive corals release.If you can wait till it has a good hold on the other rock,try to remove as much of the dead tissue as you can.If you can take the old rock out and clean it without it falling apart in the tank,or siphon it off with a hose is what I would do.
 
SHK_ATK,
I did add extra salt yesterday when I did my water change, to try and slowly bring the salinity up a bit. Thanks for the heads up about the toxin part, that is exactly what happened to my moon then. Which BTW, seems to be recovering with apple feedings.

Ricsreef,
I have used carbon, but currently do not have any carbon in, but I can easily put some in my Fluvial.

It is on the underside, over the gap between the rocks that it is deteriorating. I did check to see if I could remove the old rock a few days before the post, but it is firmly attached to both rocks still. It has been moving for probably about 1.5 months I am guessing, but I did not notice the deteriorating part until a week ago. I try and suction off as much as I can with the turkey baster.
 
If the toadstool has firmly attached to the second rock, you could always cut the part of the stalk that is bridging across the two rocks and remove the deteriorating portion on the first rock. A single slicing motion with a sharp razor blade works best, but be careful not to injure yourself if you choose to cut it.

I've saved a couple of toadstools that were burnt, flaking, turning mushy, and seemingly bound to die after being overdipped in an iodine treatment. Cutting off the bad tissue made all the difference in saving them.
 
The problem is that this Toadstool is huge, it is literally like 1.75" across. It will create a hole in the stem. Or is the entire stem solid inside? Will that recover? This thing is really big and is also constantly dropping pieces from it's crown, which I have been attaching to pieces of LR and putting in other locations in the tank.
 
The stalk is solid and fleshy. Considering that the entire cap can be cut off and the stalk will grow a new one, cutting off the bottom of the stalk to remove that decaying area should be no problem at all. The stalk on our toadstool leather is > 2" in diameter and it's had no problems with any trauma to the stalk -- I needed to move it and it had attached to 5 different rocks in our tank, meaning I had to cut it away from those rocks in order to put it where I wanted to move it.
 
So I should just be able to wait until a substanial part is secure to the new rock, and just cut straight throw the remaining piece? I will not be able to get the old rock out of the tank though so I will have to leave some flesh attached to the old rock.

Should I just cover up my other corals while I do this, and let it decay, or will my clean up crew go to town on it once it is dying?

Actually. I guess in theory if I cut the piece out between the two rocks, the old one will probably grow a new head even and just start over?

Is it normal for the crown to frag itself, and drop pieces of itself? Or is this a sign of other problems?
 
Gildurath said:
I guess in theory if I cut the piece out between the two rocks, the old one will probably grow a new head even and just start over?
Click to expand...

I would cut the piece between the two rocks and remove the decaying part. I wouldn't risk leaving it in the tank, there's too many potential consequences if more flakes off and lands on other corals.

Is it normal for the crown to frag itself, and drop pieces of itself? Or is this a sign of other problems?
Click to expand...

This is normal for many toadstools. It's how they self-propogate. I've known this to happen once the toadstool reaches a fairly good size in tanks with a good quality lighting system.
 
The problem is, the old base is still securely attached to a large piece of LR. The gap it is bridging is about 1.5", and the decaying part is pretty much in the middle of the gap, about 1" in length just on the underside.

So if I cut it, it would be easy to remove the decaying part, but I could not easily get the old base to unattach from the LR it started on.
 
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