Stressed or Melting Mushroom?

[swampdarter]

Hi everyone - the past few months I have mainly been reading through other peoples' posts, but about a month ago I finally started up my Coralife BioCube 29 along with a 2.5 gallon 'refugium' of sorts.

So now I have a problem with my first purchased coral, a cute little mushroom. I acquired it about two weeks ago and it appeared to be healthy, although it was free-floating and not attached to anything. I originally had it in my BioCube 29, and although it completely opened up for a few days, it did not seem to like the medium-strong currant in the tank so I moved it to my 2.5 gallon. It also refused to attach to a rock in either of the tanks. For the past week it has not opened up completely at all, and now it is oozing a rust-colored substance and shriveled up completely. I will include pictures for reference.

Here are the 2.5 gallon water parameters from this morning:

Salinity: 1.025
pH: 8.0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 20 (I have had problems with the nitrate rising over the past few days, but I want to discern whether or not the mushroom is just stressed or actually dying/melting)
Calcium: 480
KH: 11

Thank you!

The first picture is of it appearing healthy.

 

[cubsFAN]

That rust colored stuff is likely zooxanthellae. If you're tank is cycled, it should be near impossible to kill that shroom. You might want to get in an area of very low flow and set it down on a frag plug or a bunch of shells and wait for it to attach. Then you can move it to a spot you like. Putting a strawberry basket over it and having low flow should keep it from floating off on you. I've had luck supergluing shrooms to plugs, though sometimes they slime up and come off. It should be fine.

 

[swampdarter]

Thank you for your reply . I drip-acclimated it back to my BioCube and placed it within a "cage" that I made out of two vented acrylic soap holder shelves. It has several pieces of rubble to choose from as well as a few shells. It is on the bottom of the tank where the flow is lighter. Only time will tell!

 

[rjmurd]

Put it somewhere without too much current that you want it to stay. Then, keep a moon light or your blue lights on for the next day or so. Since it will always be lit up, it won't wrap up at night time and get blown away. It should attack itself in the spot soon enough

 

[swampdarter]

It is still throwing off quite a bit of zooxanthellae . It is in an area where there is a lighter flow rate, and it is also shielded by the 'cage' I put around it. It additionally has a little more shade. I kept the lights on last night but it was stilled closed up this morning.

Do you think that it would be beneficial to spot feed it PhycoPure Zooxanthellae?

Thank you!

 

[cubsFAN]

It is still throwing off quite a bit of zooxanthellae . It is in an area where there is a lighter flow rate, and it is also shielded by the 'cage' I put around it. It additionally has a little more shade. I kept the lights on last night but it was stilled closed up this morning.

Do you think that it would be beneficial to spot feed it PhycoPure Zooxanthellae?

Thank you!

I wouldn't try to feed it. I also wouldn't hit it with 24 hour lighting. That won't prevent it from closing, it will just stress it out more. Moonlight is fine though. I'd stay patient. If things don't improve in a few days it might be worth trying something else. Maybe some sort of dip.

 

[swampdarter]

At this point I am not sure what to do - there is no 'stem' left on the mushroom, just the flat part. It is putting off even more zooxanthellae than before . It also has a few weird white rings/wavy lines on it. I am not able to take a picture of it right now - my aunt is in the hospital and I am with her. I briefly saw it today when I checked on the tank. Hopefully I will get the chance to take some pictures tomorrow.

Also, last week before this started and things were looking ok, I ordered two more mushrooms (an emerald green and a red superman). I also ordered some blue sympodium. Should I be concerned about adding them to the tank where the sick mushroom is tomorrow? I will be dipping them in Coral RX (it is coming in tomorrow as well). As of now I plan on dipping the sick mushroom as well.

Any other advice? I really hope this poor little mushroom makes it :sad2:.

 

[Louis Z]

Hopefully you didn't add them . I would now consider it possibly contagious. I had received a rock with lavender mushrooms and they seemed to have been stressed by the shipment for each had a partially bleached spot. I thought they would recover but one started to sa at its mouth. I thought it might have been stung by a frogspawn so as to bring it to die. Now the other one is going down the same road. In addition another new rricordea is having the same issue .

 

[swampdarter]

What do I need to do to decontaminate the tank (beside removing the infected mushroom)?

Thank you.

 

[swampdarter]

And I have not added the other corals, thankfully.

 

[Louis Z]

I have no idea what to add. I am in the same boat