mushrooms

[ilv4xn]

what can you tell me about mushrooms??
I am new to SW I bought 4 mushrooms glued them on a rock and there they sit. how do they split? are they a plant or an animal? what hapens to them if they get sucked into a needle wheel skimmer pump and then spend the night stuck to the side of a hydor K4? will they live?

[jcjule]

1-
The most common is asexual reproduction.
The move around the rocks leaving a small piece behind which eventually forms a new baby mushroom
I started with 5 about 6 month ago and now i have ~40
They can also be manually splitted, search for videos in you tube

2-
They are animals

3-
They could live, depending on the damage or eventually "melt"

[ilv4xn]

super gluing to a rock is ok?

[reefkeeper135]

Gluing is fine, mushrooms are one of the hardiest corals out there, trust me .....I started off with 2 rocks one with blue and the other green mushrooms, maybe 5-10 mushrooms per rock and now they dominate!!!

Couldn't get rid of them if i tried!!! So be careful what you wish for, I for one LOVE them as do my clown fish.

[redfishsc]

They will need light. Even though they are techinically an animal, they contain a photosynthetic "algae" (technically a dinoflagellate) that provides nutrition for the mushroom coral.

Fortunately mushrooms don't need massive amounts of light. If your tank is a common sized 50 gallon (ie... isn't terribly deep), so long as you have at least 100 watts or so of flourescent lighting (even normal-output T12's... but preferably T5 High-output) you can have mushrooms. Not much else.... but mushrooms.