Description

This Strawberry mushroom was originally collected by Doc Aquarium from a farmer in Florida in 2019. The polyps have a fruity red strawberry base spotted in pink throughout. Doc likes to use these in many of our aquarium designs from high end monster aquarium systems to the standard nano reef. During aquarium maintenance you can easily prune these back by clipping them off the reef with coral cutters or scrape them with a good chisel.

Mushroom corals are corallimorpharia corals and are known as the transition of stony coral to soft coral. Most of these corals asexually reproduce and can multiply well. These little gems can do really well and some have extraordinary colors. The rhodactus species have a little texted like surface where small tentacles protrude from the disk. Some variations of the rhodactus can produce bubbles we like to call bounce mushrooms. Discosoma species have smooth disks. The ricordea species have small tentacles spread out over the disk resembling mini carpet anemones. Ricordea can have multiple colors and different patterns making them some of the more interesting of this genus. There are two different types of ricordea mushrooms. The ricordea Yuma comes for the south Pacific region and the ricordea Florida come from the Caribbean region. 

Some hobbyist like to place these on a separate rock island to keep them from spreading all over the reef. Some spread faster than others and some hardly spread at all and have to be forced to multiply. We have listed out the details for every mushroom so you know and can decide on where to place them on the reef. 

Troubleshooting: If placing them on the reef all one needs to do is keep them managed in one section desired. We like to use a chisel for pruning by scraping the ones growing out of the desired location off the rock. These little anemone like corallimorphs can sting other corals if they are allowed to spread over the reef. 

Lighting: Low lighting 30-80 plus PAR. 

Flow: Low 

Care Level: Easy  

Original Location Range: Indonesia, Coral Triangle, South Pacific

Grown in our California coral farm where we provide zero impact corals

Water chemistry: Calcium 400-450, Magnesium 1350, KH 7-9.5, pH 8.1-8.4, Nitrates .01-10, Phosphates .01-.1 salinity 1.026

Temperature Range: 74- 81 Fahrenheit 

Feeding: mushroom will consume most foods and pellets and the target feeding can be placed directly on the mushroom disk.