Need Mentoring

[Fcamdog]

I am setting up a 20g long aquarium with the sole purpose of propogating mushrooms and ricordea. So far, substrate is crushed coral, so they have something to attach to and equipment consists of this: CPR BakPak skimmer, Koralia 2, heater and 4 bulb T-5 HO for lighting.

For you serious shroom gardners what do you do to make them grow? What supplements help, what parameters do you keep your water quality at, what fish are good, what fish should I avoid, what inverts will help, what inverts will hurt?

This is staring from scratch, just added water yesterday so I want to do this right. Farming mushrooms is the goal, anything else is secondary. All tips and advice will be greatly appreciated.

Fcamdog

[mike_cmu04]

Biggest thing is keep up with water changes.

[Fcamdog]

That won't be a problem. Can anyone that is doing well propagating mushrooms lend a few tips? Thanks,

Fcamdog

[ram6519]

When I had mushrooms I didn't have to do anthing extra to help them spread they spread like wild fire on their own.

[smoyer]

I think the biggest problem is having them stay put they are pretty hardy under normal water chemistry

[Dave VG]

I have a 20H I use for propagating mushrooms, ricordea and a few other select corals that like dirty water. As far as getting them to attach which seems to be the hardest thing I put them in a cup with enough substrate in it to keep it on the bottom of the tank and leave them until they attach to it then glue them to a frag plug. As for feeding just leave the tank water a little on the dirty side (less water changes). I do feed lightly with coral frenzy once a week as well. Just remember a little goes along way and over feeding will pollute the tank as I’m sure you know. Another nice thing about softies is they do not need allot of calcium if any at all in between water changes so dosing should be minimal as well. As for ricordea propagating they seem to take forever to split for me so I usually ¼ them through the mouth and put them in a cup and wait for them to attach like I said above. Good luck to ya

[matities23]

shrooms fam is an easy coral... in my case i feed em live phyto w low/med flow... good luck!