Mushrooms melting at the foot, shrinking and dissolving

shakygator · Jul 23, 2023

Has anyone ever seen an issue like this. Having continual problems with mushrooms. Discos, rhodactis, rics and now even st Thomas. They will be growing, super healthy, dropping babies but eventually they will shrink for a day or two then start dissolving at the foot. This is a pretty common trend, the foot dissolves first and it lets loose eventually completely melting. I've tried all the antibiotic dips, potassium salts, iodine, etc. Nothing stops it. It doesn't happen all at once. This is over the course of months. One by one they exhibit similar symptoms and then they die. If it was something with overall system health I'd expect to see problems across the board. It's weird to me how it's usually only one at a time. Almost like something eats them. I've used chemiclean and experimented with in tank Cipro dosing as well. I really don't know what else to do so I was hoping someone had seen something like this before.

Parameters have been stable at 9dkh, 500 cal, 1500-1600 mag. I've slowly raised nitrates to 20-25 as well as phosphates to .2. this doesn't seem to have effected whatever is happening to my shrooms.

The_Paradox · Jul 23, 2023

I know some people with beautiful tanks that just can’t keep mushrooms/riccordia. The only thing in common with their tanks is high magnesium like yours. In their cases though they die off quickly. Usually a week or so after being added they just turn to brown slime and blow away. Completely anecdotal but thought I would throw it out there.

shakygator · Jul 24, 2023

Can a mod move this to the mushroom forum? I didn't realize they had their own category.

shakygator · Aug 3, 2023

I lost more shrooms. I figured I don't wanna just wait and watch them all die without doing anything. So I moved them to other tanks/systems.

Let me quickly describe my setups so it may be a little more clear. The main system is a 105g plumbed through the wall to a 7' sump in my fish room. Directly above the sump is a 72x18x14 shallow growout tank. Same water as the 105g. All plumbed into the 7' sump. The reef room also has a lowboy as a standalone system running an eshopps 3 channel design or whatever they call it. The last tank is a 50 cube in the dining room. It was intended to be a nem tank - it's been setup about a year. It was rocking early on but had some struggles so I had to give it much love the last 6 months.

Almost all of my shrooms are (were) in the 6' growout, but as stated I began moving them around. First I moved a few from the growout to the 105g. Same water, different tank. So far I have seen no losses in those moved to the 105. I moved others to the cube. Worth noting there are a handful of discos, and a ric and rhodactis for that matter, that have been doing really well so that was part of my decision to move others to the cube. Lastly there were a few, and ones I had extras of, I moved over to the lowboy. I think there are only 4 or so in there and I'm really just trying to spread out my stock to reduce possible losses. No issues there either.

Which brings me to my update. Today I noticed one of the discos in the cube dying. One that was there prior to the move. At the foot. It's dissolving. Just like they were in the growout. This is the first one of those discos I've lost, first one I've lost in the cube, and I find it interesting I didn't have any problems until I moved my other shrooms over there. These discos I've had for something like 10 years. Very hardy and they actually used to be in the 6' growout. I've never lost one like this.

This has me convinced there is some sort of pathogen or bacteria or something. I don't know what to do. I feel like I'll just keep waiting until they're all dead. And then maybe the pathogen will die out, or move on to something else. I am willing to pull and dip things but I don't know what I'm targeting. In my original post I had mentioned I've tried antibiotics in the tank. I could dip with coral rx, reef primer, iodine, cipro, chemiclean, melafix, or amoxicillin - or anything else someone may recommend if they might have any idea what's actually happening. I have a microscope too so I am considering looking at some of the dissolving flesh but I'm not exactly sure that would show anything other than rotting flesh. I'm certainly not qualified to diagnose things on that level (unless it's dinos!).

RickChen · Jan 4, 2024

I've same situation recently, I lost almost 20 pcs of Sunkist mushrooms, I still have no idea what's going on, I would like to know if you solve this problem.

shakygator · Jan 4, 2024

RickChen said:
I've same situation recently, I lost almost 20 pcs of Sunkist mushrooms, I still have no idea what's going on, I would like to know if you solve this problem.

I did find that my refractometer was not working. I concluded my salinity was nearing 1.030. After bringing my salinity down I do not systematically lose mushrooms the same way anymore. So I believe it was a contributor if not my primary issue.

I have seen some mushrooms still bleaching/shrink but that could be after effects from previous issues or just regular coral stability issues. Most have recovered and others have flourished.