My once purple fuzzy mushrooms have turned white. Why?

[Bethlp]

Hi. Newbie here. Please pardon me if this is a stupid question. I have a 24 gallon Nanocube. One of the first corals I added (about three months ago) was a group of purple fuzzy mushrooms. Up until about two weeks ago they looked fine. They had a little blue/white iridescense on their tips which just made them prettier. When contracted they were dark purple. When expanded, mostly reddish purple with that blue sheen on the tips. Gradually they have lost almost all of their purple color (shedding their algae?). They are now almost completely white and half their fully extended size. I have other purple fuzzy mushrooms now that are looking fine and healthy, though the edge of one has started to get pale in the last 24 hours. What's up?

Water tests fine. I use NutriSea water and adjust salinity with distilled water. I do a one quarter water change once a week. Salinity 1.022; temperature 76, Nitrate 12.5; Nitrite 0.3; Ph 8.0; Calcium 400; Amonia 0.0; Cabonate hardness 12; I turn the lights on at 6:30am and off at 8pm. No metal halides. I do have a blue moonlight.

Other animals in the tank: Bangai Cardinal; Six line wrasse; Maroon clown and BTA; zoanthus, three types of star polyp, pulsating xenia, a handful of mahano anemones; trumpet coral; button polyps; frogspawn; two branch hammerhead coral; tree coral; three other purple fuzzy mushrooms, a colony of smooth purple mushrooms; 3 nassarius snails; 20 hermits; 1 pom pom crab; 1 emerald crab.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

 

[Scooterman]

Water tests fine. I use NutriSea water and adjust salinity with distilled water. I do a one quarter water change once a week. Salinity 1.022; temperature 76, Nitrate 12.5; Nitrite 0.3; Ph 8.0; Calcium 400; Amonia 0.0; Cabonate hardness 12; I turn the lights on at 6:30am and off at 8pm. No metal halides.

You say water test fine but have Nitrate of 12.5, that is a tad high but not in tolerable for softies. You could bump your salinity up higher to 1.026 & do more water changes, It may be that other corals are affecting them, sounds like you have the tank loaded so you may need to do larger volume changes.
I would change out maybe larger amount of water like 12 gallons a few days apart to help reduce the Nitrates & run carbon to help with other corals. JMO

Welcome to RF BTW

 

[Bethlp]

Sorry, but what does "run carbon" mean?

 

[Scooterman]

Use carbon in a canister or sack, either through the sump drain or somewhere in your filter system.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

Even worse than the nitrates, are your nitrItes at 0.3ppm. Sounds to me that your tank is still cycling. Did you just recently add one of those fish? You should have NO nitrites. Not sure why you think your "water tests fine". You should read 0ppm ammonia and 0ppm nitrites all the time. If not, something is wrong and you need to do some immediate daily water changes until those parameters get back in line.

 

[Bethlp]

I'm new to the reef biz. My tank is only three months old. I said "water tests fine" because I was going by what my local saltwater tank and fish dealers told me was fine using the water tests I have. I can certainly work to getting the nitrites and amonia to zero. I should be able to do that. However, if I do that, will my mushrooms get purple again? Just wondering if they will recover or if I have killed them.

 

[Scooterman]

At three months your tank is barely cycled, in time your tank will mature & get even better but stick to the water changes, do some large ones, slowly raise your salinity to 1.026 or 35ppt. Don't add more to that tank, it is very loaded & will be difficult for a newbie to keep stable. How much sand & LR do you have in it?
& in the meantime read, read & read.
I can't say what will happen to your corals but hopefully you can gain enough experience to help them & maybe even color them back up to health.

BTW your tank looks nice, so for just starting out, I'd say you did good!

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

Not sure. They're pretty resilient little guys.

Any LFS that tells you your water is fine, with any trace of nitrites in it, does not deserve your money. They're doing you a huge disservice. I hope there are others in your area you can go to.

Regarding getting your nitrites to zero, it's not that you "should" do it... you absolutely NEED to. If this little description of the nitrogen cycle isn't news to you, then just don't read any farther. But maybe we need to take a step backwards...

A mature SW tank has two type of bacteria in it - one that eats ammonia and creates nitrites, and one that eats nitrites and creates nitrates. Obviously one feeds off the waste of the other. The ammonia comes from fish waste, uneaten food, etc. You need both these critters because both ammonia and nitrites are toxic to fish. And even more so to corals (including mushrooms). Nitrates are not toxic at "normal" levels and can be removed by doing partial water changes. There another type of bacteria that eats nitrates and burps nitrogen gas, but that's a different story and isn't important here. What IS important is that you need both of these bacteria in your tank, in the correct levels, to keep the ammonia and nitrite levels undetectable.

I'm hoping you cycled your tank, which means you gave it an ammonia source and then watched over 4-6 weeks as your ammonia and nitrite levels went up, then dropped off to zero. During that time your nitrate levels should've gone up and stayed up. And each time you added a fish, you waited a while to let the bacterial population catch up to the increased load in your tank. That's the ideal way to start up a tank.

Seeing that your tank is only three months old, and you've already got three fish and a bazillion of LPS/soft corals in there, I'm thinking you rushed it a bit. That's OK... we've all been there. Just be aware that those nitrites are not doing anything any good in there and you want to be doing DAILY 10% changes (at least) to get those down. Eventually your bacterial population will catch up, but don't add anything until you get those water parameters back in line. Here's a good link of what parameters should be so you don't have to rely on your LFS...

http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?cls=16&cat=1979&articleid=3355

I'm actually surprised some of your other corals aren't showing signs of being unhappy. Keep an eye on things. And welcome aboard!

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

Just noticed this in your post...

a handful of mahano anemones

If we're talking majano anemones, you are aware those are normally seen as pests... right? Because they spread like weeds and can sting other things you actually pay for, most people kill them when they get them in their tanks.

Just figured I'd point it out just in case!

 

[Bethlp]

Thanks for the advice folks! I did cycle the tank before I added any coral or fish. Waited a month between fish. My mistake must have been that I didn't count the corals well enough in terms of going too fast. I was only thinking in terms of fish. I'll step up the water changes for sure. Also, I'll try to make sure I don't feed too much. I give brine shrimp twice a week. Cyclops twice a week, phytoplankton twice a week and pellets in between. And recently I've been adding calcium too to get it closer to 500. As for the mahanos, I did hear that they can become pests. I'm keeping an eye on them. I have a total of four but I know they can spread.
Again, thanks for all the help.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

...My mistake must have been that I didn't count the corals well enough in terms of going too fast. I was only thinking in terms of fish.

Corals don't add to the bioload. They don't create ammonia, so you can add as many at once as you want at one time. But it's probably a good idea to go slow with it though so if you mess something up early on you're not out a lot of $$.

...I give brine shrimp twice a week. Cyclops twice a week, phytoplankton twice a week and pellets in between.

Is there something in your tank that needs the phyto? I could be wrong, but I don't see any corals on your list that can really use it. All it's probably doing is fouling your water.

And recently I've been adding calcium too to get it closer to 500.

Your current levels of 400 are fine, but if you want 500 that's cool too I suppose. Just watch your alkalinity as you go up.

 

[Scooterman]

If you want to precipitate calcium throughout your entire tank, trying to get it up to 500 would do it. Why would you want calcium that high? Natural sea water is around 420, most recommend between 380 & 450 at most. If you can maintain yours at 400, I'd not touch it.

 

[dnjan]

Corals don't add to the bioload. They don't create ammonia, so you can add as many at once as you want at one time.

I wasn't aware that corals added absolutely nothing to the bioload! They must be perfect consumers, able to convert whatever they ingest into either energy or tissue.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

I wasn't aware that corals added absolutely nothing to the bioload! They must be perfect consumers, able to convert whatever they ingest into either energy or tissue.

I think you know what I meant, but that's fine...

Compared to adding fish, you're not going to be really changing the bioload as far as beneficial bacteria when you add corals. Right? Is that a fair statement?

With the original poster's comment, they implied their nitrites came from adding too many corals too quick. My response was in line with that comment. Now if they're dumping a ton of food in needlessly to supposedly feed those corals, that's a different story. The bioload would definitely increase from the excess food, but that wasn't from the corals themselves.

 

[dnjan]

Actually, I agree for what most people consider SPS. But many of the LPS (and some of the rhodactis mushrooms) benefit (and even may require) supplemental feeding. So adding a number of those at once, combined with proper husbandry and a small tank volume can result in a significant increase in bioload. And that appears to describe Bethlp's situation quite well.

The supplemental feeding of LPS is probably more important in a young tank like Bethlp's that hasn't had a chance to develop a suitable zooplankton population yet. And the supplemental materials we use to feed corals are probably not as optimal as the zooplankton in a mature tank. So I would expect there to be more waste produced (more bioload).

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

Don,

We're saying the same thing more or less. I agree that LPS benefit/require feeding, but that assumes that what is being fed is both beneficial, and the appropriate amount. Fouling a tank with excess food - even beneficial food - will definitely increase the amount of waste that has to be processed by the tank. No doubt.

But my point to Bethlp was, and still is... just the act of adding corals to a tank is not going to cause you to watch for a minicycle, like when you're adding a fish. Personally, I don't think the tank has had enough time to stabilize from the fish load. Nevermind the fact that there's a cardinal, 6-line, and a maroon in a 24g. That's more than a fair amount of fish in that little tank.

 

[Bethlp]

Thanks for the feedback! I did get another suggestion about my mushroom yesterday but to answer a couple of questions above that I didnt' answer yesterday: I have 21 pounds of live rock. I also left a couple of animals off my initial list believe it or not. I also have a split crown tube worm, a small plate coral, and a dark blue sponge that I thought was dead (it turned gray and developed holes in it) but which has recently colored back up. Yesterday I did a big water change and got better testing kits (I was using Tetra which didn't have a 0 value on their color cards so I switched to API). Afterwards I had nitrites and amonia a zero. I did notice that my Ph was low (7.8) so I raised that some. It's frustrating trying to control the Ph when my Tetra kit measures lower consistently than my new API test kit. Anyway, both of them are better today (8.2 on API, 8.0 on tetra). I'll try to nudge it up slower in future. Anyway. My LFS suggested that I reposition the mushroom that had turned white to see if they were happier in some other section of the tank. I asked if the kenyan tree coral that overhung them in their old spot could be stinging them and they said that might be possible. What do ya'll think?
Anyway, thanks for all the help.

 

[Bethlp]

Oh, I forgot to say why I use phytoplankton. I was told to use it every few days (1 teaspoon) to feed the soft corals (the tree, the mushrooms, the zoanthus, etc) which might not be able to get much out of the brine shrimp or the cyclops. I can get some green build up on the glass from time to time, but it cleans off easily. I also found out yesterday that I might not need as much calcium as I thought because I only have a few animals that build their own shell (the hammerhead and the plate coral). I don't have any of the other skeleton building coral.
Okay. That's all for me for now.

 

[Scooterman]

Don't try to mess with your PH, it will swing throughout the day, stick with the API kits. Do try to relocate your mushrooms, it might help leave them there long enough to know if it is a good spot though. Don't over do the phyto. go about once a week & see how that works, you could be overfeeding your tank with that, really you don't need to feed them anything. You may have issues with that plate coral, they need higher flow & more light than softies, watch it.

 

[Bethlp]

Thanks again! I'll keep an eye on the plate coral and the shrooms!