How to "prune" back mushroom growth?

[Kristy]

We have some aggressively spreading fuzzy mushrooms that are encroaching on other (more desireable) corals we'd like to keep happy. I have tried cutting these things off the rock before, only to have a new happy, healthy mushroom appear where the tiniest invisible trace must have remained behind.

I am considering a thick kalk paste spread on top of the mushrooms in the most offensive positions, however I am wondering if this will just destroy our water quality... (or would it be ok if we were quick to clean up the dieoff?)

What's your favorite method of eradicating an unwanted coral? Any suggestions are appreciated!

[Mr Cob]

I keep it simple and sell the unwanted piece with the live rock and purchase a new piece of live rock.

[Joshua]

I keep it simple and sell the unwanted piece with the live rock and purchase a new piece of live rock.

^^ and then if you want to keep any shrooms keep their rock isolated with a large area of sand away from your other rocks, same with GSP and Xenia, etc... Nothing worse than having them things run all over your rocks full of SPS.

[Mr Cob]

Yep. Islands make keeping those perdy Xenia and super bright GSP corals much more relaxing.

[kenny01]

This is a good problem to have.

[Ping]

I have a mushroom and palythoa problem in my SPS tank. They are on bottom rocks and tough to get to. I keep them at bay w/ Kalk. It takes more than one dose to kill them. I kalk them only every couple of days to possibly prevent water quality issues. I do have over 400g of water, Aces largest skimmer, and a 36W U. V. sterilizer, however.

[Kristy]

Thanks for the feedback Ping! Sounds like I'm on the right track.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who has let some innocent looking softies get the best of them. What I ended up doing yesterday was to pull out the rock with (most of) the mushrooms on it. I sliced / scraped four mushrooms off with a flat edge razor blade and Xacto knife. Then I spread some thick kalk paste over the area that still had a little mushroom slime, which I know later turns into new mushrooms. There's nothing quite like that mushroom smell!

I figure I will give it a day or two to thoroughly kill any remaining mushroom slime, then try to suction off any remaining kalk paste and die off that has not dispersed in the tank. If this works, I will do a few more mushrooms every time I'm in for tank maintenance. I did not want to do all of them (still have about 17 more!) even in a system this size, 210g display plus 40 or 50 more in sump / fuge with big skimmer (not big enough) and UV sterilizer. I just wasn't sure if the dieoff and/or kalk paste remnants was going to pose any problems with water quality and happy corals.

So far it looks promising. I'll try to update and let everybody know if it's effective. I'd sure like to reclaim some of that real estate.

[tony]

i too am having a mushroom/paly problem

gonna be harder to remedy in my tank though :(

[Kristy]

gonna be harder to remedy in my tank though :(

Why is that?

[tony]

Why is that?

i cant really remove the rocks, and my tank is only 30g with not a lot of room to work.