sick shrooms?

[reef hugger]

hello everybody.

i have a mushroom rock that i acquired from my lfs. it started off doing really well, but now 3 of them have stopped expanding and have whiteish /clear spots on them. i was wondering if this could be bleaching?

my water paramiters are good.  i do 20% water changes weekly.

the tank is an AGA 10 gal. my lighting consist of 2-20 watt 6500k spiril cf from home depot in the cheap screw-in-bulb hood sold with tanks. (i'm doing it as an experiment) all of the other corals are doing good and growing.

[Delph]

(Edited by Delph at 10:20 am on June 3, 2002)

[reef hugger]

i know the actinic bulb would help. if i could find a screw in actinic bulb i would use one but so far i haven't found one. eventually i plan on moving the whole tank to a 20L with 2-55watt from ahsupply or hellolights (1-actinic, 1-10,000K).  

 

the closest coral is a ricordia but when its fully expanded its still 3" away. the current is not a problem.

 

here is a pic sorry its not very good.

[Delph]

(Edited by Delph at 10:20 am on June 3, 2002)

[djlanius]

Hmmm, I don't really think the actinic's the problem. It would be nice, but 6500K has a pretty decent amount of blue wavelength, especially for mushrooms, they're not that picky. Actually it doesn't look too terrible in the picture, but that obviously doesn't show what it looked like before. Any chance you've got any corals that are further away but have sweeper tentacles that might be stinging it at night? Any new critters crawling on it? I've never had white spots on my mushrooms.

On the other hand, maybe it is the light. Now that I think about it, I got a rock covered with really groovy hairy white mushrooms several months ago and they've now all turned reddish-brown. I read somewhere recently (sorry can't remember where) that some mushrooms are clear or white when they're young then darken up with maturity. Seemed like it had something to do with light. But that's the opposite of what's happening to you.

I don't know, sorry if this was mostly useless rambling...

[OscarBeast]

I have to put my shrooms under stuff where they get some shade to be really happy.  The ones that get direct light stay shrunk up.  I have 72 watts of light from my PC lights over my 10-gallon.

 

Try shading them and see what happens as well.

 

My lfs has a display nano that grows shrooms with just a single stock 15 watt T-8.

 

(Edited by OscarBeast at 9:36 pm on Mar. 13, 2002)

[Delph]

(Edited by Delph at 10:20 am on June 3, 2002)

[reef hugger]

when i first got them they were doing fine. that first pic was taken probably a month ago. its gotten worse since then. here is a pic from today.

sorry dj it can't be because of sweeper tentacles i don't have anything that has them. i also haven't seen any new creatures bothering them, day or night. i'll try moving them to a shadier spot tomorrow. my guess is they are trying to adjust to the lighting. i hope thats all it is.

thanks everyone

[Delph]

(Edited by Delph at 10:20 am on June 3, 2002)

[reef hugger]

i rearranged 2 of the mushroom rocks yesterday. so far there hasn't been any difference. the rest of the shrooms on the rock don't seem to mind. i'll see what happens in a week or two .

[djlanius]

Ooh, yeah that doesn't look too good. Hope the shade helps. Keep us posted

 

As to a screw-in actinic bulb, I haven't seen one, but maybe you can find one of those adapters that came out when compact fluorescents first came out. It's a screw-in base with a slot that the compact fluorescent bulb fits into. I have one I got maybe 15 years ago (which unfortunately seems to be broken, probably the reason I had it tucked in the drawer all this time rather than is use!) Mine takes the small bulbs, up to 9W, but I seem to recall they had them available for the 13s as well. I haven't yet gone out to see if these are still available, but at the time I bought it at one of the small local hardware stores.

Good luck!