Terrible Advice Tuesdays (T.A.Tues): Mushroom Eradication Is EASY!
Terrible Advice Tuesdays (T.A.Tues): Eradicating mushroom corals requires simply cutting the top of the coral off. With the top removed, the base will die.
The rest of the story: Whoever said must have fantastic luck or be completely delusional.
The only way I’ve ever successfully eradicated mushroom corals from a tank is by cutting the top off, then completely covering the base with epoxy. If the smallest amount of the base is left uncovered, it will regrow a new top and the coral will start growing again. I’ll also add enough epoxy such that I cover an extra inch (1″) of the rock around the base of the coral to make sure it doesn’t somehow find light and start growing again.
Other mushroom eradication methods I’ve tried include supergluing over the base, which doesn’t work as the coral will slime. The slime makes the glue not stick and fall off. Kalk slurry bombs also are ineffective as the slurry won’t stay in place long enough to kill the coral. Injecting the coral with a kalk slurry takes skill and luck as the coral usually retracts quicker than you can inject the kalk slurry. Finally, while you can completely remove the rock the mushroom coral is on, but sometimes that rock is a central part of your aquascaping and can’t be removed.
Clearly simply cutting the top off the mushroom coral won’t get the job done.
Update: Several readers informed me they’ve had luck with the aiptasia/majano wand for mushroom removal.
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Or u could stay away from mushrooms in the first place
I have read (not tried myself) that a majano wand would be effective at this. I have been researching it since I have an issue with these pests (majano’s)in my tank and no good way to get rid of them. I have also seen where lasers have been used to get rid of pests, mushroom or majano’s. It has to be a 1 watt laser or better.
What do you suggest for encrusting corals? I have a very happy pocillipora colony and its spores are slowly starting to take over the tank.
You can also use an aiptaiser, sends an electrical current into the mushroom. It works well on aiptaisia, xenia…
Jacob…I’m with you. The only place I put mushrooms is in soft coral only tanks.
I had an interesting experience trying to get rid of some button polyps. Apparently they released their toxin into the tank, something that affected my other corals for nearly a month–despite using and changing carbon. Seems to be clearing now, but I once again (I’m a bit slow to get the point sometimes) learned the sw aquarist’s basic rule: at first do no harm.
What about Kenya trees and those small green and red tulip anemone things. They are all over the place and my husband likes the green ones and wont let me kill them all!
Of course it is easier to just avoid mushrooms all together as you said in your guides. 🙂
The “red and green tulip anemone things”, those are probably majano anemones you are talking about.They will over take your tank. I got a ton on some rock I bought and they are everywhere now.. Hurting corals.. I have injected kalk, lemon juice and tried a fish I was told would eat them… No luck.. Going to have to bite the bullet and buy a majano wand..
I have a several plague of “star green polyp”
Any advice to erradicate?
Greetings!
I can usually just pull them off the rocks. I don’t mind mushrooms.
–Jorge and Michael: In my first tank I put a GSP colony at the top of the formation…needless to say I had to remove that whole rock only a few month later. Luckily it was a very large rock and I was able to basically take a hammer and chisel to the rock to remove the encrusted coral into small colonies. I made sure to completely remove it, despite the fact that GSP is pretty cool in the waves. 🙂
I have one for you, i was remove green mushrooms with a xacto knife and flicked one in my eye, my eye and the side of my face swelled up, my swelled so it was closed, went to the hospital, they had to call poision control in Florida to find out whar to do since the mushrooms have stinging cells, so always flick away from you
I had an issue with red shrooms taking over. What I did was to remove the rock and put it in my sump. I replaced that rock with a dead rock. Then once it was established I then removed the shroom rock and baked it in the sun. Scrubbed in fresh water and dried again and it is good to go.
Maybe I’m just crazy lucky, but when my RBTA moved to the same rock as the shrooms that were taking over, it killed all of them except one. It only took about 3 weeks too.
If completely erradicating coral is what you want, take the inverts you want to keep, put them in qt, and dose the tank with copper. Some good size water changes later, no more corals.
WOW , I’ve never seen mushies called pests before ,personally I love the little mushroom,all the different colors,I have a blue one thats my fav,hope I never see the day I have to cull them
Just get a maxi mini and press it against what you want to kill. Talk about terrible advice! Heck I frag my Duncan corals at the base and new heads grow at the stalk!
I love mushrooms, I think they are beautiful coral. In my 120, I got them to expand half the reef. I loved it though! Everyone has they’re favorite corals.
Whoa there Nik, we don’t want terrible advice in the comments for TAT.
Yes dosing a tank with copper will deal with some pests, but congratulations… You just made a tank suited only as a FOWLR.
That copper stays around for a long time.
I usually take the rock cut off the mushrooms and place the rock upside down so that residual mushroom bases dont get light.. they die quickly without light.. even if a few survives and finds its way up then repeat couple of months later.. gone!
Just don’t buy the things you don’t want in your tank. Be smart and research or isolate the coral rock to make sure only what you asked for is on it.
i bought a majano wand and well worth the money, while killing what it touches i tried some flat worms a long the way and it frys them like small pan cakes, but i first siphoned off most of them, i will use flatworm exit next by salifert but i know from the past i will have to uses 4 times the normal dosage, wonder if there is something better to use ?? bill
or you love mushrooms. but i’m lost are we talking about recordia and reds, greens, and neons. Because these are the only kind i’m aware of is there pest mushrooms ?
A majano wand works ok if you can get to them but most hang just around the edge of a rock, inside a hole, etc.. Mushrooms, I put a small rock next to the the ones moving and when they attach completely I sell or trade them. Best way I found to rid aps and majanos are with a Acreichthys tomentosus filefish. Two days after introduction in my 140 reef I could hardly find any and the filefish doesn’t bother anything else.
If you like soft corals, you’re going to love mushrooms. If you don’t, you won’t. To each his own. Personally, i love the little suckers. Come in all kinds of colors, plus you can get Rhodactis which have some really cool color combinations (like orange and purple, red and pink) or Ricordea which have cool color combos as well. There are enough colors and variations that you could fill your whole tank with them – spotted, striped, hairy, bullseye. But don’t call them pests. Those are fighting words for those of us that love ’em.
I had an area of blue, another of red, one with green mushrooms, that I made an effort to not let hybridise, all these were very bright & I loved to see the fluoro colours under just actinic.
When they got more numerous I bought a rabbit fish with blue specs all over him, and he ate all over 1.5 days including all my buttons which annoyed me, but I realised that if you had a problematic number of mushrooms, this guy would help. As long as the fish is fed well on algae the Zoanthids were left alone. Proving that researching the fish before is worth it because the rabbit was advertised as coral safe.
I’m eradicating some zoanthid polyps on some rock in my tank now. Too much allelopathy going on. I’m having luck by cutting off the heads while simultaneously siphoning out the clippings. The web of polyps feed that are left behind are removed with a small stainless steel “fine detail” brush; while siphoning. I have to siphon and where a high-quality respirator to avoid experiencing a high fever and illness from exposure to palytoxin. It took me 5-6 episodes to figure out I have one of the rare varieties that excrete paylytoxin. So, if you “upset” your zanthids, be mindful of this risk.
N.b.: I do need to “brush” the rock a couple of times each week until “I win and the zoathid gives up and dies out completely”. Takes about 4-5 weeks. No biggie.
All I know is that if mark doesnt do an update video of the tank soon I am unsubscribing!. You have been warned.. lol
Ricky…I’ve got some new livestock coming early next week so I have a legitimate reason to wait at least a couple more days!
Why can’t I get polyps to live and my mushrooms will not multiply. I have LED lighting and I’ve tried all different brightness with no luck. All other coral do fine but these two.