what's wrong with my mushrooms

[sploke]

I always see how people have mushrooms that take over their tank and go crazy...I think mine must have missed the memo. I picked up a few frags about 8-9 months ago, one rock had 3-4 purple mushrooms on it and the other had 2 striped green mushrooms. They were all about .5" across at the time. Since then, the green ones are exactly the same in size and number. The purples have gone to about 7-8 mushrooms, but they are all .25-.5" across, none of them ever get any larger.

Tank specs as follows - 55 with 20gal sump, they are in a low-med flow area on the bottom of the tank (I've tried them in 3-4 different spots, higher flow, higher in tank, etc, no difference). 4x65w CF lighting, bulbs are ~4 months old. Ca ~400, 11dKH, mag about 1440. Any ideas?

 

[ucflumberjack]

nitrates, phosphates, ph, temp?

 

[sploke]

nitrates 0, have to check phosphates again but they are typically 0, pH 8.4, temp 80-81

 

[Patrick12]

Mushrooms would probably benefit from a higher nutrient environment. Of course that rarely jives with the other corals. Some people have great systems of SPS and low nutrients and still have mushrooms thrive. Most of the propagation systems that grow octocorals have a few phosphates and nitrates in them....anemones too.

 

[ducklabdad]

Different species of mushrooms will be different sizes.

Do you know that the smaller ones that you have are a larger variety?? They may be as large as they are supposed to be?

 

[sploke]

They look like common purple mushrooms that you see, usually about 1" across or so, mine are just about half that size.