Hi, I bought neon green regular mushrooms and put them towards the top of my tank that has 4 T5HO bulbs. Within a month the mushrooms started to become brown. I move them lower and they continued to brown. I put them under a shaded rock, and they became less brown, but not nearly as neon green as when I purchased them. I just moved them into another tank with minimal lighting and they are totally brown. What causes mushrooms to become brown and what lighting do mushrooms corals prefer? Thank you.
neon green mushrooms became brown...why???
- Thread starter pitmindi
- Start date
trinidiver
New member
thats where you went wrong................. mushrooms dont like bright lights. they should be placed low on rocks and close to the sand or in the shade.
i had some green hairy that did the same thing and never got back their color until mths after (6mths) sometimes they may never get back color. that happened to some neon green ones that turned lime green.............. think the light loses their color pigment
philosophile
New member
Yeah the brighter the lights the less colorful they tend to get. Put them in a shady indirect lighting spot and they should go back to their original color after some time.
G4546
New member
Generally if corals begin to darken in colour (brown out) it's from excess nutrients in the system and the zooxanthellae over populates in the coral and gives the "brown" colouration. We have very brightly coloured mushrooms (of all colours) under 2 400w halides as well in 'nano' aquaria with 250w 20k halides in direct light, both of which again are very colourful. This sounds like there is excess nutrients in your system (NO3 PO4) big water change and routine maintenance will colour your shrooms back up over the next coming weeks/months. 
exonn
New member
i have some mixed experience with mushroom colors.. i still have my hairy mushroom in top of my tank under 5 t5's and its still have nice colors, but the "regular", as you say, neon green witch was taken from poorly lit tank was loosing color while lying on a sand... I put it in a shade and after 4 weeks all the color is coming back. NO3 and PO4 are at 0, (well its 0,0055 mg/l for a PO4 )
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