Mushrooms dying? Or are they being eaten

[RalphTheOscar]

I posted a thread in "new to the hobby" but didnt get much response.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2423104

Some of my coral seems to dying or being eaten by pods. There are pods near this frag like its their new home or something...




Ill post new pics tomorrow but it seems the mushroom to the left of the dying mushroom in the pics above is starting to suffer the same fate....
Any help/explanations anything?

 

[Deton8it]

Those aren't mushrooms. Those are Palythoas.


John

 

[philosophile]

It's not likely those amphipods are eating your palythoa. More likely something else is causing your palys to die, like water parameters. I'll guess that it's that the tank hasn't fully cycled yet.

 

[RalphTheOscar]

The tank is a little over 4months old(I hope its cycled) The pods in my tank are multiplying like crazy and for some odd reason they are out during the daytime almost all day. The other corals in my tank are doing good, and if u look in the picture there is new Palythoas growing(sorry I also look at these and think mushrooms) Girl at the fish store thought this was odd too..

 

[zoomonster]

I've kept a boatload of zoo's, paly's etc over the years and never seen anything, other than sundial or pyramid snail, eat them. I think maybe some nudi's will but never had that problem. Plus I've always had a large pod population.

 

[Fallling]

I just went through something like this with my tank. Because I had no fish in a 5 month old tank, I had a huge population of pods. I got a bunch of new zoa frags (shipped overnight from a live sale) and on two of the frags, the pods were literally swarming. I mean dozens all over them. Those zoas wouldn't open. Within a few days, all the polyps were gone while the dozens of other zoa frags I have were untouched.

If you do some research on the google machine, you'll see is this apparently is a thing. Some people swear this can happen. Some swear it doesn't. Unless, you've seen it yourself, people tend not to believe it happens. My feeling is that these particular frags were stressed and needed time to adjust but were further being irritated by the swarming pods that sensed the weakened zoas. With the 2 dozen other zoas plus nps gorg, pipe organ, birdsnest, ect. all growing and thriving, I don't believe my water was the issue (I also test pretty religiously and know for a fact all my params were good).

So, with all that being said, I would definitely look at water parameters first. Could be they are stressed from something and the pods aren't helping the situation. If you only see a couple, the pods probably aren't an issue. As I said, my small frags were being completely overrun by dozens of pods.

BTW, I finally got a fairy and flasher wrasse for pod control.