Mushroom Die off

[smallreefdave]

I have a weird scenario with 2 colonies of mushrooms that have been in my tank, thriving until about 2 weeks ago. Since then, with no changes in water parameters, I have seen about 15 mushrooms from 2 colonies "melt" away. The water parameters are nitrates undetecable, phospates show less than .25, salinity 34 PPM, SG 1.026, temp runs 78.5-79.0. Lighting is MH 250 Watt 10K, but only for about 7 hours a day. Flow is low to moderate in tank. Again, no real changes in chemical or physical parameters in months, except that I was running carbon on the DT until about 6 weeks ago when I stopped running the carbon reactor (about 40 GPH flow).

The affected colonies are a purple and a marbled red colony, both of which I have had at least 6 months, and were readily mulitplying. A few polyps at a time appear to shrivel up and die off, as if they were rotting (once they start, they are done). They deflate, and their foot appears to melt, with a white stringy substance, not coming from their mouth, but rather, it appears when the foot begins to detach. They are not located close to each other, at least 3 feet apart, and other colonies are still thriving, including a few other varieties of actinodiscus and tons of Ricordea Florida.

Any suggestions on cause and/or solution? Everything else in the tank is doing great, including LPS (a couple of acans, bubbles, brains, etc, other mushrooms, zoanthids, clams.

 

[redfishsc]

I respond only because noone else has yet, since I have limited experience with shrooms.


I've read several other folks having a similar catastrophic shroom melt-fest. Most folks who suffered this advised to remove the colony (if possible) and then remove the affected mushrooms and discard them. You can try to rehab the non-affected shrooms in a seperate tank. Whatever is killing them seems to spread from one to the next.

I'm sorry I can only parrot info I've read before, but I figure it's better than nothing. I'd remove as many of the affected colonies as possible.

 

[smallreefdave]

I think that is what I am going to do. I have removed any that were dying, but it seems like a day later another one is affected. I am going to place both of the affected colonies into a QT after a dip in Lugols. Hopefully that will take care of it and they will come back to health.

 

[Ncastro1981]

had same issue. did alot of wc, like every other day 10% and it stopped

 

[smallreefdave]

It finally stopped, but I lost about 25 shrooms. I normally do about 60+ gallon water changes bi-weekly. I don't have a TDS monitor on my RO/DI, but my filters weren't very old, maybe 2 months, so I hadn't checked them. I decided to take a look, and the sediment filter was pretty discolored, so I changed it. It could be coincidence, but after a few water changes with the new filter set, it slowed and stopped (I did 3 50+ gallon changes in a week period after the posting and filter change).

I think that the whole problem was my stupidity. I just can't believe it was the mushrooms that stressed...nothing else was showing any signs of stress.

Anyway, since I am too lazy to look in the back room where the RO filters are on a daily basis, I bought a dual TDS meter that I can install above my water containers to make sure I have no excuse for not knowing when to change the filters!