Anybody have trouble growing mushrooms?

[vessxpress1]

It's almost embarassing but for some reason, my tank does not grow mushrooms very well. I bought a pretty expensive rock of dark red mushrooms and now they're not even close to what they were when I added them to the tank.

Here's what they looked like when I first got them:

Since then, most of them have shrunk, disappeared and turned a lot more pale. I still have a couple nice ones that look pretty close to those but that rock is nothing like it was when I bought it.

They were under MHs at the LFS and at the top of the tank. I have them at the bottom of mine under T-5s. I think my algae problem has bothered them quite a bit now but they were on the decline before it took off.

My ricordeas haven't faired well either. They were much larger when they were new and now they've shrunk down considerably. They still look the same, just smaller and they don't multiply at all.

Any ideas?

Blue mushrooms seem to do ok for me.

 

[drummereef]

What's your water params?

 

[dsteamn]

I've had the same problem with some of mine. Some do really well and others don't. I had a rock where all of the shrooms just fell off. Some went other places and reattached. Other's just disappeared into the abyss. I don't have halides, but I have 6/65 10Ks. Everything else does well in my tank. One of my shrooms has grown to be about 6x4 inches. Others only get the size of a dime. Go figure.

Anyone have any insight, I'd love to hear it.
Thanks

 

[dustin323]

Actually my brother had a problem keeping green flourescent mushrooms in his tank. All of his parameters checked out fine & he has various other corals, including other mushrooms that are fine. He gave the rock to me with the green mushrooms because they were dying away & now about 2 weeks later they're back perfect.

 

[dsteamn]

Gee, I wonder why. Ideas guys?

 

[DesertBandits]

predominantly red corals/inverts/fish normaly come from deeper depths. If you have alot of 6500k or maybe even alot of 10,000k; you may be irritating them. Try shading the shrooms or placing them lower, or is if you were thinking about it anyway, make your overall light setup more blue and less red/oj/yellow spectrum.

 

[DesertBandits]

other possibilities seem to be your water parameters. maybe too much cal or alk? maybe something else?