Dying Mushroom

Hello guys,

I have a problem keeping shrooms. A little background on my DT. I have a 55 FOWLR with a medium CUC, a whitecheek tang, pakistan B/F, Long nose B/F, anthias, diamond goby and a sandperch. The DT have been running since January and everything's been fine so far, I also do regular wc, once a week with a RODI unit I own. All of the parameters in the DT is up to par, but can't figure out why the mushrooms keep on dying.

forgot to mention, I have a T5 4x54W light fixture. 2 10k and 2 actinic bulb on a timer that run for about 8 hours a day.

This is the second time that I buy shrooms and when I buy them they are fully open and looking really healthy until they get into my DT. Any educated guess from anyone will be gladly appreciated..

I just wanna have nice shrooms in my DT!

 

Too much light.You are running the same fixture that I ran on my 90 and it melted shrooms unless they were shaded or on the bottom. Mushrooms are a low light coral unless you put them under a ledge in a shaded area your bulbs will melt them. Also Butterflyfish can sometimes pick at corals so it may be a combination of the two.

 

I concur . Dial down the light dude

 

cool, will the light be fine in a 90g?

 

I don't think it is the light, I have a lot more light than that on my 55 gallon (+500watts) and my mushrooms do fine from 1/2 way up on down. I would consider your source for your mushrooms, maybe they are not healthy when you pick them up? Do you dip or qt your corals before putting them in your DT? Mushrooms are kind of strange sometimes. What type of filtration are you running? Maybe your bioload is more than your filters can handle?

 

its weird, when I buy them they look really nice open and vibrant. My bioload is light so I believe, I have 2 clowns, 1 anthias, 1 tang, 2 B/F and a goby, medium size CUC and 2 anemones. I also have about 50 lbs of lr and 65 lbs of sand. I have a 20g sum with filter sock and a SWC 120 cone skimmer. I got rid of a banner fish 2 days ago and the shrooms are coming back, i dont know yet if he was the culprit but will keep an eye othe shrooms. Im also waiting on a struntium order I place online to supplement them.

 

It sounds like something is picking on it like others have said. Your system sounds fine for mushrooms, if you can QT them so the fish cannot get to them but they can still receive light and water flow (like a produce basket or something porus like that) that will be the tell tale sign.

 

I think the produce basket will be too big, I'll try a small turtle cage and place it in there. What are your thoughts in regards of the strintium supplementation?

 

The turtle cage would be fine, I don't think you need to add any supplements for mushrooms. Do you test for strontium? As mushrooms are a soft coral and that is mostly used for building skeleton's of hard coral. As long as you are using a quality salt mix like IO, or RC, or Red Sea (my favorite) and doing regular partial water changes, I do not think you need to add any. I personally do not dose for anything I do not test for.

 

I have some fan worms in the DT and I been feeding them phytoplanktom which also feeds corals. Is that a good idea? I've been doing it for about 3 months now.

on the salt, in using IO but the calcium levels in it is kinda high which is the explanation why the calcium in the DT is always at 500ppm which is high. I read somewhere that coraline salt is a good salt so was considering it....