Best mushrooms for low-light tank?

ACBlinky

Premium Member
I've got a 21g FOWLR I'd like to turn into a shroom tank - initially the plan was to go all black and white, but a few mushrooms hitchhiked in on the LR and I had some frags lying around... you know how it goes. The only issue is light; the tank has 2*15W NO fluorescent, one 18K bulb and 1 actinic. It's located near a north-facing window and does get a little indirect sun, but it's certainly nowhere near as bright as a reef tank.
I want to go all mushrooms, and I'd love everything from pimply to striped to rics and hairy shrooms, but I want to be realistic here. What are the best choices for low light?
 
Most Mushrooms I find need a bit of a stronger lighting system to be able to reproduce or to grow bigger and so on...something like the rhodactis inchoata or any type of actinodisci sp. will do just fine in low lighting situations. Ricordea might also do somewhat well in low lighting systems but it's always a good idea to get the best lighting system you possibly can afford to better promote the health and wellbeing of any type of coral you want to introduce to any tank. Since MH's are often to expensive for most aquarists, consider investing in a T5 setup. I've been using a 48" Sunlight Tek T5 hood for about a year now and all of my mushroom corals are looking beautiful and healthy. The cost on the unit typically is around 250 (lowest I could find on any website) and the bulbs are usually around 30 bucks each. You're cutting it close though...be careful if you do introduce more corals.
 
Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it :)
We're not planning to upgrade the lighting though - the shrooms hitchhiked in and I thought if there was enough light I'd start adding more, make the tank really shroomarific :D The hitchhikers are red with small bumps and along with the frags they actually seem okay so far (possibly the window light helps). I guess I'll keep an eye on them and add to their number if they continue to look healthy and start to multiply.
 
yeah, just keep an eye on things. You should be fine but don't count on incredibly fast growth and reproduction. My first lighting hood was a 48" Coralife fl. hood similar to what you have now and my shrooms did fine but didn't grow rapidly. I ended up having so much fun adding about one new shroom rock per month that I overstocked the tank and when I added my T5 hood I ended up selling some corals to a buddy of mine from the much faster growth..the shrooms overtook the tank! Good luck!:D
 
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