Think I'm going to the coral store tomorrow, I'll see if they have any interesting shrooms for a good price.

But first I gotta find a suitable blender.

Well I just pulled the Dr Frankenstein. I kinda felt bad putting all of those shrooms in the blender, oh well...Think of the outcome right. I found a decent article about different ways to prop mushrooms. Here is the link and a picture of what it looks like when I poured the slury back in to my tank.

http://classroom.addictiveaquatics.com/art...tion+Techniques

CowKid,

THANK YOU FOR DOING THIS! And thank you everyone who's about to experiment. Please post updates often.

So I set up my pico... it's been up a while, it's amazing (though I can't get a good picture to save my life). What's killing me is I really want to try out all this one with my spare red and purple mushrooms (think it would work with green hairy?) but my pico is packed. I may do it in a bucket just for fun and give mushrooms away to my local reefers club members.

This thread must be kept alive until results are seen!

I was also wondering if it would work with hairy mushrooms. I may try this also...but i will be setting up a 2.5g aga with a few pieces of live rock in it and a small filter....as soon as i have money haha

Ccaragol, Your welcome. I use 1 green, red blue white striped, purple, green hairy, and purple hairy mushrooms. I am not sure what will work and what will not. I will post updates often. I guess right now it is a waiting game. We need to get a few more people doing this, my fears are that something will go wrong with my tank and l'll have to restart it. Does anyone have any ideas of how much and what this test aquarium should be feed? What salinity and temp would be the best?

I've also got a single green frilly mushroom that is beautiful, about 4" across. Anyone know if those would work as well?

post a pic I have never seen a frilly mushroom.

I'd say 78-82F should be fine, as long as it's stable and not fluctuating much do to high room temps or extra heat from the lighting. Salinity SG at 1.024ish will work, but you could be a little off of that with mushrooms. No need to feed, but I think if you have some phytoplankton it wouldn't hurt either.

Thanks. When I first added the water I put in a 6 drops each of Micro-vert and Phyto Plex, I alos added so Phytoplankton from ESV. The only problem that I am having is getting the little boogers to sink. I think that they may have got infused with micro bubbles in the blender. Hopefuly that will not harm the bits of mushrooms. Do you think that they can generate from all of the slim that they ectrude? If so I am set.

I was going to try the razor blade method on my superman rhodactis, but now that I think about it, maybe I'll just use the blender......



...not THAT brave yet, lol.

Hmm, maybe I should strain my smoothie before I dump in the shrooms. But you're right about the the slime possibly producing more, if it will you'll end up with a ton lol. As I understand it any spore has the possibility to create a new mushroom. But Mine have slimed plenty of times in my current tank with nothing to show for it.

I will have to let you all know.

I was wondering how small the peices you blended were? post pic when the water settles

Some were 1/16" to 1/8" others were a lot smaller that that. I have had the filter off for around 1.5 hours and it is starting to settle. It took 45 mins for all of the surface bubbles to disipate and the pieces to fall to the substrate. I can take a pic if you want, but you will not and I stress not be able to see any of the pieces of the mushrooms. The substrate is rather course, so most has settled in.

just to let all of you know the container that you plan on growing you mushrooms will stink real bad. Needless to say my wife was not happy when she got home today.

LOL should I be laughing so hard?

hope it works out. what are u running in the filter?

LOL!
I can only imagine--

My wife never appreciates the stench of coral experiments either.

Good job taking the leap and getting started!

Arg, I went to the store and got a $8.95 (Canadian) food chopper, so like 6-7 bucks American I guess. Then I went to the Coral store to check out some shrooms and they did not have any I felt were attractive enough for this experiment. If I'm gonna do this and hopefully have it be a success I want something that looks good when it's done, not 30 small brown mushrooms. Looks like I'll have to wait a couple days and try again.

Crappy phone camera picture of the Food Chopper from Wall Mart.

I am running esv carbon and ammonia reducer. No other filter media at all.

This is either the dumbest thing I have ever heard or the smartest?

Got any pics of the shoom acualy in the blender or of the slurrry in the pitcher?
That would be interesting to see!
How about pics of the tank after the slime cleared to show the tiny bits of shroom?

Prop I didn't take any pics of the blending process. I was to busy gaging from the stench. I have a two pictures of the tank, one of the tank after it has cleared and the other of the substrate. I cannot find any of the bit and pieces. So this may be the dumbest thing but think of how supprised we will all be if it turns out some wacked out mushrooms. If you are wondering the water in the blender looked like you put ketchup in it and then blended it.

Two days old.

Good Luck...
But sounds a little over blended...
Check you filter media for any flesh remains...wash them back to tank
Did you put any protective sponge layer on filter intake??

Izzue

YOU GUYS ARE KILLING ME!

I sit and read threads for up to 8 hours every time I'm at work(no sht, 8 hrs lol) ..ANYWAY.. I don't think a day has passed where I didn't go home to convince my wife into letting me try and or spend money on something else that I read about. n-r.com is the reason why my wife hates me and my hobby.


This is awesome. We won't have a sanitary blender much longer.

Thanks for the great idea!

Im just waiting for someone to not tell their wife, and then she uses the blender not knowing it had shroom guts in it, this thread should start some household trouble! lol

Nano-Reef.com, Upping Divorce statistics since 2001.

yeah maybe a bit of over kill. never know though. you might just have 2000 mushrooms pop up out of no where in a month or two.

thanks for the stench warning. in that case i wont do it. i have to sleep in the room i'd be grinding them.

keep us updated

I have to sleep in the room that the tank is in, hmmm. Oh well. lol.

BTW, Cow, how big where the mushrooms you blended, not sure If you said or not.

Definitely the smartest... I mean if you want a certain shroom, and only have one and want more, then why not? It's tried and true and it works!

What Fl told me is that mixing different ones won't give you a weird combo of all, but it'll grow into each of the kind you used. So if you use a green, a blue and a red, then you'll end up with lots of greens, blues and reds.

Well the stench is gone!!! My wife is super sensitive to odors and says that she could still smell it, but she couldn't handle the smell of country ham frying today.. Oh well.

Izzue I only have the media bag in the filter and do not have any intake screen on it

A1rabbit I had a few sizes 1" to .5". I aimed for 1/8-1/16" pieces but you all know how they shrink when they are messed.

The way I see it is if any grow on anything but the substrate BACK IN THE BLENDER.. MUHAHAHA MUHAHAHAHA

i wouldnt feed them. there's no point since there isnt a mouth formed on them to feed. just let them settle out. it's going to stink and be a mess. i would have tried one color morph, one mushroom at a time.

my plan -

5gallon bucket, coarse sand/rubble, clamk lamp, water changes. now... to get off my duff and do it.

i think overcoming the water quality issue would be the biggest hurtle. hence the suggestion of one at a time. if one makes a hundred, why do 5? lol. JMO.

gl, and you need a fish room!

oh and i dont think hairys would take it well. mine are easy to maintain, but i cant imagine them doing well settling out of a blender. maybe being hacked up a little, but not pulverized.

You said pretty much everything I was goona write, VERBATIM!!!! (sp?)

I would not feed either, especially ANY kind of DT's, that will just polute your water more. I would not necc. filter either. Mushies like that dirty water.

I definetely would not do more than 5-6 mushies, one at a time, not all in the blender.

I would also say Frilly/hairy mushies you would be safer to just cut in half with a sharp blade.

To everyone else, I saw Calfo do this YEARS ago, (8 years or more ago) IT DOES WORK, and it works well!
D

Well I just did the 1st water test today..

Temp 81'
Ph 8.2
Salinity 1.023
Nitate 0
Nitrite 0
Ammonia I am not sure, just the slightest tint in the test volume of water

Just a question or two. What would you leave the photo period at? I am wondering if 24 hours would be too much or 12 on 12 off. Also I have read that if you do not have a lot of flow the pieces will get some sort of infection. Have any of you seen anything about this. I know that they do not like a huge amt of flow. So what amount of flow would you aim for?

Wow.. this is really the strangest thing I have read on these forums in awhile. But it itches the desire to try. (eyes the empty bucket in the corner and then the 3 mushrooms she fragged last nite....)

I wonder what my co-workers would say at the shop tomorrow if I purchased some mushrooms to put in the blender?

I think I see a green one LOL!

j/k

I hope this works out

This is a bump for my fore mentioned questions..

What would you leave the photo period at? I am wondering if 24 hours would be too much or 12 on 12 off. Also I have read that if you do not have a lot of flow the pieces will get some sort of infection. Have any of you seen anything about this. I know that they do not like a huge amt of flow. So what amount of flow would you aim for?

I wouldn't do a 24 hr. photo-period... too many risks involved, and you have to give the zooxanthellae some time to rest, they can't photosynthesize that long without needing rest.

Can't mention on the flow, but I would assume the HOB is providing plenty. Just enough to keep the water moving without disturbing the pieces too much.

24 hours?? no way! I hope you arent doing that. keep it normal. i'd do 12/12 or something less.

i'd just take out 1/2 the water and replace as often as possible (daily...) . i wouldnt run any flow at all until they settle out. in that size tank, they're going to be kicked up and about all the time and you'll never get anywhere. or turn on the filter for an hour at a time or something.

petsmart has a bag of crushed shells for $10 on clearance. I was tempted to get it!

GL

I have been doing 12/12 photo period, so thats good. As far as water changes I have beed doing 30 oz per day. I have not been using new water to do the water changes though. What I do is use water from my sump on my mini-bow. I didn't want to shock the mushrooms with new water. I also figured the additives would help the tank too. Do you think I should use newly mixed water? As for the crushed shells go get them. I am curious to see if they propigate of different substrates better than others. On the next go around I may make dividers that are around .5" tall and place different substrates to see what they grow on better. I have a little aquaclear mini with its intake tube pulled up .5" from the impeller and that has the flow cut below half of the lowest setting. I made sure to not have anything blowing.

So I got some mushrooms donated to me today by the place I go for corals. They were pretty small, maybe 1/2" when cranky, it made them pretty hard to chop up so I plan on trying again with a bigger one when I find a bigger one that looks worth while to try it on. I have a couple in my main tank but I like them where they are.

I took a video, I'll post it when YouTube has it uploaded. It's nothing special at all, but you can sort of see what they look like chopped up, what few bits there are from two small shrooms.

I just dumped them right into my 4 (or so) gallon tank that has 2 hermits and 2 snails in it. I did this because I want to see how well it works in a tank that is/will be used for a bit more than just mushroom proping. The way the tank drains is from the top directly into filter floss that sits in a funnel in the fuge, I'll see if any mushrooms bits end up in there tonight as I changed the floss before adding the smoothie mix.

I can see two fairly big chunks of the bright green mushroom just sitting in there, the rest has gone MIA.

Oh, my bits sunk pretty fast, within a minute. The sizes were from about 1/2" to 1/8" and some smaller misc pieces.

All readings were correct,

Salinity = 1.025
Nitrate = 0
Nitrite = 0
Ammonia = 0
PH = 8.2
Temp = 78

A1 I am so glad that you have bit the bullet. Now alot of stress has been taken off of my little tank. I have only located 2 pieces of my mushrooms. They are 1/16" in dia. The rest are a lot smaller. But one good note is that I am beginning to see some really dots. I am not sure if they are baby mushrooms but they weren't there yesterday. The only thing in there is a small hermit. Hopefully I will get a few from this exp. I intentionally chopped up my mushrooms to a finer consistancy to push the limits. I wanted to see what the yields would be. Of my findings on the web sometimes if a muchroom is severly damaged the mucas can form a new colony. If that is true I am set.

lol, I wanted to chop these up a bit more but had no luck and did not want to make the pieces I had a bit too small by continuing with the process.

My problem will be the rocks, I bet all the shrooms are in the back some place chill'n in the dark.


Video still processing in the YouTube servers someplace.

Here's the video. It's been sped up a lot in the middle. You can see I only end up with maybe 12-20 decent sized pieces. Not much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0uLekOVqrw

well I am starting to see little white formations on my substrate. My ammonia has dropped to 0.00. I believe the formations are little shrooms, but I could just be wanting it to work that bad.

Cow...I would remove the hermit to keep him from knocking the little shrooms
around so they will have a chance to attach instead of getting knocked up in the water column and poss filter out...IMO

Izzue

I couldn’t resist and gave it a try myself, with two discosoma striata in a small blender. I pushed the button only once, but I might have done it for to long -2 seconds, at the most- because I ended up with a few small parts (that I can see), and a foamy slurry . Not smelly, but very cloudy water. I poured it in a small recipient, and let it settle. We’ll see, in a few days, if I didn’t over do it. Maybe I’ll post some pictures, too.

this gets my vote for post of the year! it reminds me of the ipod in a blender on youtube, do a search for that, its pretty cool. I wouldnt reccomend that blender for shrroms though

Dane, just so you know, the chameleons are excellent candidates for slicing and dicing in half to double what you've got. I ripped one in half on accident several weeks ago and both pieces are growing big and strong!!

Nice!!!!! Yeah, I had a couple att. to my LR in anchored places. RIP, now I have multiple!!!!
What have I started with this blender thing!!!!! LOL
D

What does the mushroom slurry smell like? When I propagate my rhodactis mushrooms the old fashion way (cutting manually into tiny pieces) it smells like strawberries .