Polyp I.D. help
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It's a type of mushroom coral. It will propagate itself, but IME that species doesn't tend to propagate very fast on its own. You could try feeding it some filter feeder food (plankton, brine shrimp, etc), which is beneficial.
Agree, a normal green (?) striped mushroom, and yes they tend to spread slower than some. That will sound disappointing at first until you get some of the fast-spreading red or purple ones and end up with them all over your tank...
Ummm, I actually disagree, I think the green striped mushrooms are by far the fastest spreading mushroom and will be a plague in a tank in no time.
My old neighbor bought a small rock with them on it and within 9 months pretty much his entire tank was green striped mushrooms. This picture was taken after 6 months of them spreading in the tank.. 3 months later the entire 75G tank was mushrooms, all from a small rock that started with about 8 mushrooms.
My old neighbor bought a small rock with them on it and within 9 months pretty much his entire tank was green striped mushrooms. This picture was taken after 6 months of them spreading in the tank.. 3 months later the entire 75G tank was mushrooms, all from a small rock that started with about 8 mushrooms.
I'm not sure if that's the norm. Me and everyone else I know has actually had trouble getting them to propagate, whereas all my other shrooms grew like crazy. My friend who grows and sells corals was fragging them to get more, they did not spread much on their own. I think out of one, the whole time my tank was set up I ended up with 3 overall.
I wonder if something in the tank caused them to spread that way. Kind of interesting. Either that or the above is not the exact same species we were getting perhaps?
I do notice they are growing right in front of a couple of powerheads, so I wonder if water flow had something to do with it.
I wonder if something in the tank caused them to spread that way. Kind of interesting. Either that or the above is not the exact same species we were getting perhaps?
I do notice they are growing right in front of a couple of powerheads, so I wonder if water flow had something to do with it.
Could be flow related, that 75G tank in the picture had a Mag18 return pump and 2 Koralia4's. Lots of flow that blew the mushrooms off the rocks and made them spread all over the tank.
One thing I know is no LFS in my area will take green striped mushrooms because they are considered a "weed" and grow way to fast for them. When my ex-neighbor tore down that tank he brought all the live rock back to the LFS (he offered whatever I wanted first, but not even I wanted rocks infested with mushrooms) hoping to get some sort of credit, at least for the rock, but nope, all the LFS would do it take the rock for free because they were all "infested" with green striped mushrooms, so they made the value of the rock, 120lbs, worth $0/lb with the mushrooms on it. 4/4 LFS wouldn't offer a penny for 120lbs of rock because of the shrooms. All the LFS told him if they were any type of mushroom other than green striped, he could have got some $ for them, but with the green striped all over them it would require too much work for the LFS to clean the rock of them so it wasn't worth the time/energy. Every LFS compared green striped mushrooms to aiptasia and I have to agree, they are just as toxic, spread faster than aiptasia, and just as harmful to other corals they touch as aiptasia. He practically had to beg the LFS he bought the rock from just to take it from him because he had tore down his tank and went through the effort of putting all the rock in rubbermaids to bring back to the LFS and didn't want to have to haul them back home with no tank to put them in.
One thing I know is no LFS in my area will take green striped mushrooms because they are considered a "weed" and grow way to fast for them. When my ex-neighbor tore down that tank he brought all the live rock back to the LFS (he offered whatever I wanted first, but not even I wanted rocks infested with mushrooms) hoping to get some sort of credit, at least for the rock, but nope, all the LFS would do it take the rock for free because they were all "infested" with green striped mushrooms, so they made the value of the rock, 120lbs, worth $0/lb with the mushrooms on it. 4/4 LFS wouldn't offer a penny for 120lbs of rock because of the shrooms. All the LFS told him if they were any type of mushroom other than green striped, he could have got some $ for them, but with the green striped all over them it would require too much work for the LFS to clean the rock of them so it wasn't worth the time/energy. Every LFS compared green striped mushrooms to aiptasia and I have to agree, they are just as toxic, spread faster than aiptasia, and just as harmful to other corals they touch as aiptasia. He practically had to beg the LFS he bought the rock from just to take it from him because he had tore down his tank and went through the effort of putting all the rock in rubbermaids to bring back to the LFS and didn't want to have to haul them back home with no tank to put them in.
That is just weird. I wish mine had grown like weeds! Instead my less attractive red ones spread like crazy, not that it mattered since with the high light they were all under the rocks 
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There was quite a bit of flow in our 90g reef, but the green mushroom was sitting low down in a low flow area, so maybe it would have propagated more otherwise.
.There was quite a bit of flow in our 90g reef, but the green mushroom was sitting low down in a low flow area, so maybe it would have propagated more otherwise.
Thanks for the info. I've go a buddy running a jewelry shop and he has about 9 tanks set up in there. We sometime talk fish and one day I brought him a Green Star polyp frag and he gave me this one lone polyp. If it spreads, great, if not cool. Took me several tries to keep it from floating into the disc of my LT anemone. It's tiny, about the size of a 500yen coin.
Shrooms are easy to propagate just cut a little bit of it's foot off and you have a new mushroom. You can also just direct a power head at it and if it moves it will typically leave bits of it's foot behind and form new individuals. During, and for about a week after either of these processes you should add carbon to you carbon filtration system.
