Mushroom Question

I upgraded my lighting from compact florescent to led. I started off with a single mushroom frag and now its multiplied to about 12 in the last couple months. It seems like once one of the mushrooms gets to the size a little bigger than a quarter it detaches and just floats around the tank til I place it somewhere else. It almost seems like it detaches so the smaller ones under it have a chance to grow. Is this typical behavior of mushrooms?

 

IME this is the mushroom not being entirely happy with location. Could be too much flow or too much light.

IME, too little flow and/or light isn't a real issue w/shrooms.

 

the group of mushrooms are in a low flow area and lower light area . My original mushroom is in the front middle of my rock work with higher light and higher flow and doing fine so i'm not sure if thats the problem.

 

I agree. I have some that get 3"+ fully extended. Lower light and lower flow.

Edit: Just saw you confirmed they are in lower light/flow. In that case, do you have pictures of both?

 

The first pic is the small group and the second one is the original mushroom that detached. The one thing I did forget to mention there are a few polyps mixed in with the group of mushrooms.

 

Sounds like coral warfare. The mushrooms are reproducing to compete for space, but can only take so much of the palytoxin released by the polyps before they have to abandon ship.

 

that sounds plausible to me - Mr. Bill is so smart! My mushrooms typically haven't detached.....

 

thanks Mr.Bill... I'm pretty sure thats whats going on now. The two that detached were right in the middle of a couple polyps and the other ones on the outside seem to be doing fine.