I am taking for granted that your
nitrITE levels are actually zero and that your nitrATE LEVELS ARE THE ONE THAT ARE UP JUST A BIT... With Mushrooms, the propigation is one of the more easily done proceedures. With a single muchroom, you can just cut the cap off and slice the disc into 4 to 6 pieces (btw, my esperience has been that if there is a problem with getting them to survive, the more you cut them, the poorer the survival rate.) Cut the stem close to the cap, and the stem will regrow the head within 2 to 3 months. Take the cuttings and put them in a grow out tray (cover the bottom of a piece of tupperware/rubbermaid container with about an inch of coral rock rubble 1 to 3 cm size, fix the container so you have about 4 to 5 inches of water above it, slow movement and at least 80 watts of lighting near the surface of this (I use a tray under my main reef that is 8 inches deep, let the water coming from the berlin skimmer fill it, and let it drain through a hole in the far end about 5 inches from the bottom of this tray, it drains back into the main sump, and I light it with about 80 watts of NO fluorescents sitting directly on top of the container.) I usually cut the caps into 4 pieces, each piece having a section of the oral disc. I throw these into the grow-out tray and leave them there for a week or so, during which time they reassume most of the round shape and begin to attach to the rubble, although they are now much smaller than the original piece of mushroom. These seem to do well in the grow out tray for 3 or 4 weeks, after which I superglue them to a small piece of live rock and put them in a low current area at the ends of the main tank (a little in the shadows of the LR piles, no direct MH lighting, mostly
VHO lights, and the end of the bulbs at that.) I have also used the plastic from fruit bags to attach them to the rock as well, seems to do marginally better (this is very subjective, no measurements done here) by pressing the base of the new mushrooms gently against the rock (several) and wrapping the rock with the plastic netting and gently securing the plastic with rubberbands (I have had some escape from this, but they turn up in the tank somewhere...) This seems to work best with smooth mushrooms (actinodiscus), but the discosoma spp and ricordia spp. do as well as do the rhodactus spp. (giants), although I have no personal experience with the amphiplexus spp (giant cup mushrooms??? If you plan to purchace rock with the intention of doing this, I would choose rock that is very crowded with mushrooms, or look for specimens that have multiple oral openings already (they are beginning the fission process on their own). I hope this helps, I think the hardest thing in propigating mushrooms is making yourself make the first cuts with the scissors...
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Tom <"{{{{>(
(TDWyatt)
Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. -Plato
