Mushrooms

A mushroom is the coral that makes people who have killed things try again. No skeleton, no alkalinity demand worth worrying about, and a metabolism that forgives the swings a new tank produces.

The named ones are a different market. Jawbreakers and the Ricordea yuma morphs are bought as individual animals, which is why nearly everything here is WYSIWYG and photographed as the exact piece you receive.

Placement is where people go wrong, and it is almost always flow rather than light. A mushroom that keeps detaching and tumbling is telling you the flow is too high. Give it a surface it can grip and then leave it alone. One that has been moved three times in a month has spent the month recovering instead of growing.

They multiply. A single yuma splits and gives you two, then four. That is the argument for buying one good one instead of three ordinary ones.

Three genera sold as one category and separated by surface texture: discosoma smooth and flat, rhodactis carrying branched outgrowths, ricordea covered in dense round bobbles. All three want the lowest light and least flow in the tank. PAR 30–75, low flow, lower third.
How to identify it in the Coral Field GuidePicking a mushroom that will actually attachMushrooms are sold three ways and they behave differently. Discosoma are smooth and flat and spread by splitting. Rhodactis are hairier and larger, and the bigger ones will catch and eat a small fish. Ricordea — both the Florida and Yuma forms — are bubbled and the most sought after, and they are slower to multiply. Bounce mushrooms are Rhodactis with inflated bubbles, and that trait is not stable: a bounce can lose its bubbles and get them back depending on conditions nobody has fully pinned down.When you buy, look for a mushroom with a closed, intact foot and no torn tissue at the base. A mushroom detached and floating in a bag is not automatically dead, but it needs a rubble bed to reattach and that can take a couple of weeks.Mushroom care, in numbersLight: 50–120 PAR. Mushrooms are the lowest-light coral most people keep, and too much light is a far more common mistake than too little. A stretched, pale mushroom is reaching away from light.Flow: low. Strong flow keeps them curled and eventually detaches them.Placement: lower rockwork or sand shelf, out of direct current.Water: tolerant. Mushrooms often thrive in tanks with nutrients higher than the SPS crowd would accept.Common problemsIt detached and moved. Normal behavior, not a crisis. A mushroom that is unhappy with light or flow releases its foot and relocates. Put it in a low-flow rubble container until it grabs on.It is shrinking and will not open. Check flow first, then light. Mushrooms rarely have pest problems; placement explains most cases.Questions we get askedWill they take over the tank? Discosoma can, given nutrients and time. Ricordea and most bounces spread slowly enough that it is not a concern.What UPS Next Day Air for a live animal actually costsUPS Next Day Air for a livestock box costs us about $30 inside Florida and between $45 and $75 everywhere else in the lower 48. We charge $30 in Florida and $50 elsewhere, which means on most out-of-state orders we are already absorbing part of it, and above a $349 livestock subtotal we cover the whole thing. We would rather tell you that than pretend shipping a living animal overnight is cheap. Orders leave Key West Tuesdays and Wednesdays so nothing sits in a truck over a weekend.