Red mushroom, perfect conditions, still shrunken

[Bret Brinkmann]

Had this one for several months. At first it shriveled up. I learned they don't want much flow or light so I moved it to a shady low flow region and it bounced back. A month later and it started shriveling again. Water is great. No fish, no ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, phosphates, or copper and nothing attacking it as far as I can tell. Temp is 78F, SG 1.026, dKH 8, pH 7.8, Ca 460, Mg 1260, 20,000 K LED lighting (it's in a heavily shaded spot), blue led night light.

It is too small to even take a picture now and it's white guts are out of its mouth. The best I can figure from my research is that it has an infection. I got this idea from reading up on anemones. Haven't added anything to the tank in over a year except phyto feast and ROTI water. I also have GSP and green hydnophora. Both are doing very well.

 

[FLAdaboy]

If your nitrates are undetectable, then that could possibly be the issue. Mushrooms like the water dirty. Lower light and lower flow as well.

 

[Bret Brinkmann]

Do you know roughly how much nitrates they like? I don't think I have enough time to build some up. Poor thing is hanging by a thread. Maybe Red Sea's reef energy or something similar?

 

[FLAdaboy]

You could aminos. If you're running ULNS you should be using some sort of nitrate in a bottle. I like to keeps lots of fish. Heavy on the fish means more poop as well as a good feeding schedule. I barely feed my coral directly.

 

[Bret Brinkmann]

Still getting use to the acronyms. Had to look that one up. My tank is a zero nutrient system right now. No fish and tons of macro to absorb anything that does get introduced. I'll try some supplements and let everyone know if it worked. Haven't found any info on this forum about what makes people's mushrooms bounce back. Lots of threads about problems but no solutions or even if their mushrooms lived.

 

[FLAdaboy]

Still getting use to the acronyms. Had to look that one up. My tank is a zero nutrient system right now. No fish and tons of macro to absorb anything that does get introduced. I'll try some supplements and let everyone know if it worked. Haven't found any info on this forum about what makes people's mushrooms bounce back. Lots of threads about problems but no solutions or even if their mushrooms lived.

Your tank isn't zero nutrients. Depending on what kind of test kit you use makes your nutrients undetected. You will always have nutrients or your coral would be dead. I would get some aminos if the low nutrient system is what you're going for.

 

[Bret Brinkmann]

Tried the aminos but it still shriveled up to nothing and died. Thought it may have been something eating it but never saw anything attack it. Saw a bristle worm eating my GSP polyps and removed it, but this was after the mushroom died. I now have red bugs but never saw them when the mushroom was alive. Don't know where they came from. Only adding fresh water to the tank. They don't seem to be on my green hydnophora, which is doing very well. Do red bugs even go after mushrooms? I would like to figure out what happened so I don't get more that just end up dying too.