Mushrooms have taken over my tank

[jgwinner]

How do you get rid of Mushroom corals?

Long story - was unemployed for a couple of years (COVID didn't help) and had a friend watch the tank.

Destroyed $600 of pumps.

Had it running on one pump for a while and now mushroom corals have taken over nearly every square inch of the live rock.

Now that I'm employed, what's the best way to get rid of them or at least reduce their number by 90%? I have no problem with going slow.

== John ==

 

[Sk8r]

BEST way is via your local fish store or reef club. Trade them the mushroom rock in favor of new conditioned rock. They may be scrub 'shrooms but somebody who wants an easy reef might be delighted to have them. I'd then consider a cleanout and recycle of the tank, including new sandbed. I'd say just recycle, but honestly, I've had three corals and uncounted shrooms and sponges survive rock delivered wrapped in newspaper in a snowstorm and then assembled into a new tank and brand new salt water, so a simple recycle of extant rock has no hope. The things reproduce amazingly.

 

[jgwinner]

Thank you! Good advice.

I tried putting a white opaque ceramic bowl over one of the rocks, and it didn't seem to stress them out at all after a week. I pulled the bowel out because it was starting to get stuff growing on it

== John ==

 

[smilet98]

Let's see a picture


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[sdbc]

As Sk8r said, trading them in at your LFS is the best way (mine were worth way more than I expected.) If that's not an option, Aiptasia-X works. Cover the whole shroom. I have to do that to a few every month since they have a bad habit of killing my other corals on contact. I've read you don't want to overdo it with Aiptasia-X since it can mess with your alkalinity if used in large quantities.

 

[tzylak]

Bump. Over the last 6 months I got an explosion of Discoma Nummiforme in my tank. Mind you I have the tank for over a decade and all that time I had maybe 30 of them living on top of the reef. Now they are everywhere, suffocating the rest of my growth.
I tried removing the top rocks and using an Exacto knife to remove each, plus a bit of the rock, to remove the "roots". Then, rinsing the rock afterwards to remove any trace of their remnants. -They returned within two weeks
Then I devised a roto-rooter/vacuum-cleaner device to extract them from the lower rocks. With that, I removed the big heads, only to have several small ones pop up in the place of each one removed.
It is a loosing battle. . . .
Help please!!! .

 

[Reefing102]

I don’t know if there’s much better options than previously mentioned. Which mushrooms are they?

 

[griss]

I don’t know if there’s much better options than previously mentioned. Which mushrooms are they?

My thought exactly. Years ago (1990ish) I had a plague of green striped shrooms and ended up trading the rocks they were on to an LFS. Nothing else worked for me.