Mushrooms Don't Like My Tank

[herring_fish]

Standard mushrooms don't seem to thrive in my new tank. My ricordea are doing fine all the time but the standard mushrooms and hairy mushrooms just don't grow and if a parameter goes off for a short while, they shrink down but don't come back very fast if at all. I have lost a lot of them this year. I am getting a big batch soon and the guy that I'm getting them from gave me a small rock with four of them on it. In his tank, they were very large. Of course they shrank because of the move but they have not pumped back up in a week. When I get the bigger shipment, I want to be ready with a tank that they like.

My tank is a little over a year old. I run an Algal Turf Scrubber (ATS) but it is the same dump bucket that I use for about 10 years in my old tank. Mushrooms love my old tank, although they didn't become pests like in the tank that I am getting these new mushrooms from.

This time, I added an un-lit refugium sump filled with coral rubble. It has low water flow through the cryptic fuge. Not too long ago, I added an air line in the bottom of the far corner to insure that things don't get too stagnant.

I have been feeding a large amount of food into the tank in preparation for growing filter feeders like dendros. A lot of the food is powdered but I put all kinds of stuff in there. I think that the food has something to do with the problem. I don't quite know what it is though because my nutrient levels are consistently good because of the ATS and other coral are happy. I have had problems keeping my pH up. I think that the food indirectly suppresses it. Recently, I have gotten that under control as well.

I just don't know what it is that the mushroom don't like. Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[jsharp1]

maybe ur water is too clean?? lol, really just a guess, but i do have a friend that his tank crashed and he really hasn't done anything to it in over a year. He's just starting to try and get it back together, but anyways he's got mushrooms growing everywhere.

 

[stubby 58]

Standard mushrooms like what they call dirty water . What that is I really don't know that is what I have been told . I have trouble keeping them myself .

stubby

 

[Xtreme Audio]

Thank god that I am not the only one. My mushrooms have pretty well disappeared. I am currently having the same issue with zoas as well and heard that they like "dirty" water as well. Times have changed over the last year and I have fallen in love with SPS and LPS.

 

[spw4949]

H20 parameters? It's hard to try & determine what's going on without knowing what the water chemistry is like.....I'm assuming when you say "dendros" you mean dendronepthea?

 

[spw4949]

Also can you elaborate a little on your set-up? Lighting, filtration, do u have a skimmer? Do you have a protein skimmer?

 

[spw4949]

Sorry, repeated myself there.......

 

[herring_fish]

I don't have a skimmer. I have a 400watt metal halide that is about 2 feet above the tank and a pair of old style VHO actinics. I put the mushrooms in various areas in the tank from bright to shaded.

Yes, I am going to try to grow dendronepthea. I started slow and have built up the tanks ability to handle the food. I have no hair algae in the main tank. The rock does turn brown from time to time when I over feed until the little cleaning crew of crabs and snails get t it. Turbo snails tend to die out. I think that it is from a lack of food. Calcareous algae doesn't grow throughout the tank very well but likes certain areas only.

H20? I don't know what you mean. As I said, pH used to drop often. dH is 12. I try to keep my calcium above 400. I don't dose Kalk but am thinking about starting. Nutrients normally run very low unless I dump in something experimental that gets a strong feeding response from the yellow gorgonian for example but spikes the ammonia. I hadn't run carbon until last weekend. In my old tank, I put some in a sock and placed that in the dump bucket. I never pumped the tank's water through the carbon.

My tank is 130 and my sump is a 55 gallon with a 4" sand bottom and otherwise full on coal rubble. That is all that I can think of that is relevant.