mushrooms vs other corals?? allopathy?

[astroboy]

For the last six months the acans, frogspawn, fox and torch coral in my tank haven't been fully extended, and in fact I think the frogspawn is going to die. As you can see from the attached image, up until six months ago these corals were doing great. The other corals, sarcophyton, elegance, montipora, wellsophyilla, are still doing fine. Water parameters are optimal. The CF bulbs are two months old. I've done three 40% water changes in the past six weeks, I'm also running carbon 24-7.

 

The only thing that's changed is that I have alot more mushrooms in the tank. Has anyone had any experience with the corals I've named being sensitive to the chemicals mushrooms produce? I believe the expression is allopathy?

 

Thanks!

[flowerseller]

any new fish added during this time?

[jaddc]

That's a tough question to answer. But if that is what is happening, you may be able to counter that by increasing the GAC and perhaps swapping it out more frequently.

 

You feed the corals, right?

[astroboy]

I've changed the yellow tang for a powder blue.

 

I'm using ROX .8 activated carbon from bulkreefsupply. Anthony Calfo gave a talk a couple years ago at CMAS where he said that carbon tends to get clogged after two weeks, so I've been changing it out that often.

 

I feed the corals food cubes once a week, every other week I hand feed them bits of shrimp or clam.

 

I've read that sarcophytons will sometimes shed sort of a waxy coating, which I suppose other corals might be sensitive to, but I've had that coral for years and never had a problem like this.... I'm really stumped.

Edited January 9, 2012 by astroboy

[jaddc]

So the GAC seems fine (especially since you also did some water changes). Maybe add 25% more when you change it out, JIC? Maybe change it weekly? If you have decent flow, the the GAC should pull out the toxins pretty fast. Whatever the GAC misses, the protein skimmer will pull out. But what you described is pretty standard, and I have not read anything about mushrooms pumping out so much toxin that your regimen couldn't handle it.

Cubes of copepods or other zooplankters? Maybe feed 2x a week? Could have been surviving for a long time, but not thriving, and now they are withering.

 

Good luck!

J

 

 

[astroboy]

Update....

 

A month ago I sold my sarcophyton and killed off most of my mushrooms. (The only thing that really worked was Aiptaisa-X, neither vinegar nor Tropic Marin Elim-Aiptas worked very well, even when I injected the shrooms with a hypodermic needle).

 

All the other corals have opened up again quite nicely, to the point where I had to move alot of them so they wouldn't sting each other to death. So, the problem was certainly some sort of allelopathy since I made no other changes. I'd imagine the sarcophyton was the main problem but since I killed off the mushrooms at the same time I can't say for sure. I think the sarcophyton was just too big for my 29 gallon, even with water changes and carbon.

 

I did some reading on wetwebmedia, and was surprised to see that it was taken as common knowledge that mushrooms cause major allelopathy problems. I'd never heard of that before and it doesn't seem to be mainstream thought in WAMAS. Bob Fenner is one of the main gurus on wwm, so I'm hoping we can get him to talk about allelopathy a bit at the next meeting.

[LanglandJoshua]

This is very interesting, I've got a a few mushroom covered rocks of various sizes. There has been a good bit of coral loss in my tank as well. But I believe it is a lack of water changes and high phosphates. Things I'm fixing now. I will keep this in mind if the coral loss continues past my known chem issues! Thanks for puting this up.

[smallreef]

If your able and instead of killing them could you 1. take the rock out that is covered in mushrooms (Im SURE someone would want it 2. scrape the mushrooms off with a razor, to again give away and as the last resort kill them ??

[ErikS]

........ Water parameters are optimal................

Define optimal? It's been my experience that Euphyllia, frogspawn in particular, aren't particularly fond of what is commonly thought of as "optimal" water conditions.

 

Have you made any improvements recently?

 

(just tossing it out there)