New Approach to Battle Nuisance Mushroooms

[labas39]

I've been plucking off mushroom from the rocks and unfortunately, sometimes on my acros, in my display tank.

Here's my arsenal of tools.

That keeps them away for a month or two. I had a rock, however, where I never was able to do a good job because the rock is so porous. When I try to pluck them off, they just retract back into a hole.

Here's a picture of that rock with all those mushrooms:

So, I took a new approach!

First, I removed the corals from that rock, one of which was my colony of Hawkins. They're in the frag tank for now and should be fine.

Next, I plucked as many of the mushrooms as I can.

Finally, I covered any remaining mushrooms parts with epoxy putty and I filled any of the holes with the putty where others retracted into.

Here's the rock after the procedure:

I'm going to wait a few days and pluck any shrooms that pop up before I glue the corals back.

 

[cet98]

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...............

shrooms are corals too.... :'(













yes...i am a shroom luvah.....

 

[madjoe]

Shrooms def can be pia . At the same time when i get tired of all the work of sps i will go shrooms cause the dont die they multiply lol

 

[jrpark22000]

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...............
shrooms are corals too.... :'(
yes...i am a shroom luvah.....

No! Shrooms, Z&P, gsp and the like are weeds. Aggressive stinging weeds. Burn them all unless segregated to their own little rock

 

[labas39]

shrooms are corals too.... :'(

Yes, I know they're corals too and I do my best to give away for free the ones I pluck. See my thread the other day where I gave away 7.

I purchased one blue and one green back in the early 2000's and since then, I've progressed to SPS so now those two shrooms are haunting me!

 

[Pfisherman]

Good thing snorkel bob doesn't frequent CR...
I hope.

 

[Top Water]

Ive used a tooth brush on them and blue cloves

 

[labas39]

Ive used a tooth brush on them and blue cloves

Did you use it with the rocks still in the tank or after you took the rock out? I can't take out most of my rocks, the entire aquascaping will collapse.

 

[madjoe]

I zap mine takes while each shroom then had to epoxy over it just in case i missed any little piece not a fast cure but eventually was shroom free

 

[labas39]

I tried something new the last couple of nights.

I bought Aiptasia X the other day. After turning the pumps off, I punctured the mouth of the mushroom with the provided applicator and injected a bit of Aiptasia X into the mushroom.

For the larger mushrooms, I waited about 15 minutes and pulled the mushrooms off the rock with my arsenal of tools. It seems like the Aiptasia X stopped them from retracting into their crevices and they pulled off more cleanly; I assume they lost some strength of their foot, or whatever it's called.

For smaller mushrooms, I just let them sit there; they seemed to shrivel up themselves.

It doesn't appear that any acros were bothered by the procedure. One of the mushrooms was growing directly on the acro.

 

[kdog23]

hmmmmm-I might give that a try.

 

[jrpark22000]

ditto, going to try this one myself.

 

[labas39]

hmmmmm-I might give that a try.

I'll keep you posted on how well it works. One thing to note is that it is slow going. I didn't want to do a large area at once so I did a 10x10 ish area and it took me about 45 minutes. I have a lot more to do but that one area is now nice and clean.

 

[labas39]

Note that I don't think the Aiptasia X will kill the larger mushrooms but it did seem to stun them enough to take further action.

 

[kdog23]

Yeah I just have a couple now----I re-did my scape and pulled the nasty's off. But new guys popped up.

 

[Michael..z]

Good approach to those nuisance corals. I'm plagued with green zoos myself . If your near the Niles area id love to grab some shrooms off your hands

 

[labas39]

I work in Des Plaines; if I pluck some some off and they're relatively intact, they're yours.!