How to kill fuzzy green mushrooms?

[eshook]

Unfortunately my 24 NC has been degrading slowly, because I have been busy working toward my PhD degree. It started as a great looking tank with a variety of corals. Now it mostly looks like a sea of fluorescent green, because I have green fuzzy mushrooms spreading to every nook and cranny in my tank.

On occasion I take the time to kill one or two by trying to cut them off with a razor blade, but any piece that remains just re-grows and the surrounding mushrooms fill the voids quickly! Is there an effective way to remove the mushrooms? I would like to get my tank back to its former glory, but am not sure what to do?!

 

[cet98]

give them away...in bunches if need be...don't kill them...

I'd take a bunch off your hands if you weren't so far away...

 

[eshook]

Hey cet98 I don't necessarily mean kill. I'll give them away as frags or colonies, but how do I get them off my rock? Mostly I don't want them in my tank anymore so I need a good way to get them out of my tank and scraping with a razor blade doesn't work.

 

[cet98]

oh...that makes me feel better :lol:

try placing a small powerhead pointed right at them (not a 1000 gph unit ) and the higher flow should make them detach in an attempt to move...
then you can remove them safely

 

[eshook]

Hmm... That is an interesting idea! How long do you think it will take for them to detach?

I'll have to find my suction cup mounts for one of my small power heads.

Thanks cet98!

 

[philosophile]

Cutting them with a razor blade will inevitably leave pieces of the foot behind... Which will regenerate and turn into a baby mushroom.

So if you want to get rid of them.... cut them, like you have, and put the mushroom you cut off on some rubble rock. After about a week, it'll attach and you can give it away.

As for the left over foot.... There are lots of possibilities in trying to get rid of it all so, it doesn't grow back. Kalkwasser paste is supposed to work well... But honestly I think the most effective is pulling the rock out and burning it. A little kitchen torch is pretty effective.

 

[cet98]

Hmm... That is an interesting idea! How long do you think it will take for them to detach?

I'll have to find my suction cup mounts for one of my small power heads.

Thanks cet98!

hard to say...could be overnight or a couple days depending on how "stubborn" they are

GL and pleez LMK how it works out for ya!

regards,
C

 

[sponger0]

Use a hammer and chiesel and chiesel the rock away from under their foot

 

[javatech]

i had a big tank and had a lot of them and others that would pop up everywere i would just inject vinager in to them and they would be gone in a few days
just go to a farm and ranch store and you can get the syringes no problem

 

[Sao870]

haha id love to see a pic of them

 

[eshook]

Wow! So many options presented. Powerhead, cut and kalk paste, cut and torch, chisel, and vinegar injection.

I have tried the cut approach (without the kalk paste/torch) and the feet just grow back quickly. I tried to chisel once, but unfortunately the rock work doesn't lend itself to chiseling as it is the top rock of my nano aquascape and would force me to move a lot of other rocks to get at it. Thus making chiseling too difficult.

I think I will try the powerhead approach. It seems to hold the most promise for approaches I haven't tried. If that doesn't work I may try the vinegar injection method. I already have syringes for majano anemones.

Unfortunately I have a few things going on the next few days, but once I have the powerhead setup and directed at the mushrooms I will post results along with some pictures on sao870's request.

 

[Tahoe Reefer]

I've removed hairy green mushrooms by removing the rock from the tank, scrubbing the mushrooms with a stiff bristle brush, rinsing the rock and using a dental tool called a water pick to remove any small left over pieces. Most water picks cost around $50 and come with high pressure water jets and tiny spinning brushes. Carefull what you shoot with a water pick, it'll remove everything including Monti.

 

[eshook]

Well unfortunately a pile of assignments needed to be graded this weekend so I haven't been able to test any removal methods, but here is a picture of my fuzzy green mushrooms (their colors are bland, because I had bad bulbs for a while

The mushrooms extend well to the right of the tank. Rics, zoas, and a number of other corals used to sit on that rock, but now mostly only mushrooms

 

[caudill187]

Those things can be a nuisance for sure......

 

[droth335]

Ran across this post in doing a search on how to get rid of mushrooms. We have quite a few too and some of them are pestering our SPS so we really need to thin them out. Given the coral growth and encrustment (see attached FTS for illustration purposes) removing the rocks to attack the mushrooms is not an option. I am thinking he vinegar injection may be the way to go since I can reach many of them with a syringe. I assume that this would need to be done in stages so as not to add too much vinegar at a time? Any thoughts on that? Any other suggestions? Ignore the blue clove polyps in the picture - we know there is no way to get rid of them and they don't bother the other corals...

 

[Six line]

I had a similar problem with the blue cloves (Sarcothelia Edmondsoni?) and in the end just began gluing frags on top of them. Worked like a charm. As far as killing them with vinegar you can inject quite a bit of vinegar in a tank seeing as it's essentially a carbon source.

 

[Cptn Spaulding]

2nd on the hammer and chisel or screwdriver. works really well and its like arts and crafts time! that way you wont have to buy more rock later necessarily.

ive gotten rid of my blue clove polyps by burying them in the sand. they dont last more than a couple days when that happens.

vinegar - you can dose 1 ml/g without any issues, since thats what most people do when dosing vinegar to remove phosphates and other nutrients.