can only keep cheap mushrooms help

[polyppetey]

I love rics and stuff but every time I get one it does fine for a while then gradually shrinks and shrinks then disappears.
I have no problem keeping regular purple and red mushrooms and even the green stripy ones. It seems the more $$$ the mushroom is the faster it dies.

I have a 12 gallon nano with 48 watts PC light. The parameters are good ammonia 0 nitrates 0 nitrites 0 ph at 8 to 8.2 and alk at 11 DKH right now. Temp is a balmy 74 degrees. I run a 12 hour photoperiod. The tank itself has been running for about 5 years now with weekly 10-20% waterchanges. I keep salinity at 1.025.

Can anyone who has kick butt rics post their secrets or at least their parameters?? so I can try to match them ?? Thanks. Pete.

 

[ErikAnderson]

Do you think the alk is a little high? I keep my tank at 78deg and 8dkh and everything is WAY too happy for the ghetto setup i am running.

 

[redfishsc]

I have had HORRID luck trying to keep mushrooms (even the cheapos) under PC lights. I was able to grow Xenia, birds nest, and pavona but nary a mushroom, they always died.

What color/K light are you running?

 

[polyppetey]

I have the stock nano cube 50/50 lights 48 watt total.
I had a great red rhodactus that was about 3 inches across. it tripled in size from when I got it then suddenly it shrank up and was gone. I have some other rhodactus that are rainbow colored that are doing well enough, weird thing is I did not buy those they just appeared one day on a chunk of LR I bought, now I have about 6 or 7.

 

[SAPseven]

Lower your alkalinity ..

i use pc lights and my wattage is fairly low considering the standard for most people on this forum ..

all my ricordias FL and yuma are doing fine .. and growing .. and making babies ..

try dosing a little vitamin c .. theres a thread on this actually .. and lower yur alk to about 9

then try again .

 

[aquaboy620]

dosing vitamin c? do u know where that thread is and what it helps out?

 

[stargazer=2]

jmo your tank temp is low 78/79 dkh looks ok to me

 

[gindobuck]

what are the best parameters for ricordias?
what ph?
do kind of flow do they prefer?
my ricordias dont seem to like the light so i hide them underneath this bridge to shade them but i see them moving towards the light. kind of confused with the lighting thing.

 

[yiliyang]

Re: can only keep cheap mushrooms help

Wow, I have the exact same problem. I thought I was the only one. I tried rics 3 times and they do get smaller each week until all gone.

My personal solution was to just not keep rics. I dose a lot of stuff and nothing helped. Cheap shrooms on the other hand grows out of control.

what a shame, I love the look of a fully covered ric rock.

Yili

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13809739#post13809739 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by polyppetey
I love rics and stuff but every time I get one it does fine for a while then gradually shrinks and shrinks then disappears.
I have no problem keeping regular purple and red mushrooms and even the green stripy ones. It seems the more $$$ the mushroom is the faster it dies.

I have a 12 gallon nano with 48 watts PC light. The parameters are good ammonia 0 nitrates 0 nitrites 0 ph at 8 to 8.2 and alk at 11 DKH right now. Temp is a balmy 74 degrees. I run a 12 hour photoperiod. The tank itself has been running for about 5 years now with weekly 10-20% waterchanges. I keep salinity at 1.025.

Can anyone who has kick butt rics post their secrets or at least their parameters?? so I can try to match them ?? Thanks. Pete.

 

[Hawk23]

Where in the tank are you keeping those expensive mushrooms? Just because theyare really brightly colored does not mean that they need tons of light. I burned some ricordia when I used to have PCs. I had to keep them on the bottom of a 12inch deep tank.

IMO temp should definately be higher(77-80), and maybe lower the DKH a little, but other than those minor things your water paramaters look good.

 

[whatcaneyedo]

I've been having the same problem starting this year. I had a ric colony for 3 years that grew from one to about twelve and then suddenly this spring it and a new ric frag that I bought just lost color shrunk and died. Meanwhile all of the clams, other soft corals, SPS and LPS that I keep are doing fine as always.

It kind of sucks but on the other hand I still have plenty of other healthy growing corals to fill that space... I wonder if it might have something to do with chemical warfare? I do however run 2.5 cups of carbon that I change monthly and a Bullet 2 skimmer.

270gal system
250W MH
Alk 10
Ca 400
Mg 1300
Temp 80
Nitrate <1
Phosphate .1 (just started using rowaphos)

 

[reiko1078]

you said you have a 12 hour photo period? maybe there getting too much light?. ive had rics randomly melt down when the one next to it is thriving and splitting. currious creatures they are