Mushroom Shrinking!

[bg7003]

In my 20 gallon tank i added my first bullseye mushroom with only 30 watts of florecent lighting. I put him near the top and he was doing great. But now like 4 days ago i added my new 130 watt system to it with lunar light. At first he was expanding more than ever. Huge! but then, yesterday it looked like he didn't fully expand... Something wrong? Could it be a phosphate problem? I added kent essential elements to the tank a day before this happened and now my sand has a greenish color. Oh i relocated the mushroom to near the bottom of the tank. still in full light though.

 

[Colin_T]

It could be stress from too much light too suddenly. Whenever you increase the light on a tank you should do so slowly over a course of several weeks otherwise the corals can get sunburnt. The sunburn part is more from metal halides but even fluoros can cause stress if there is a massive increase in light.
There is also the possibility the supplement you added caused the problem. If it was in a powder form then some of it might have landed on the coral and that would cause it. You want to add supplements in a liquid form (dissolve in water first) and add a small amount at a time. If possible use an airline and drip it into the tank over the course of a day.

 

[Crazy fishes]

I would think that the latter is the problem, the same happened to me recently when I stupidly spilt about 5ml of carbonate solution right on to my frogspawn. His response shed bucket loads of mucus and pull himself right into his skeleton. Thankfully he is fine but I was so scared that my beautiful frogspawn would perish as a result of my stupid and careless blunder. What exactly is the stuff you added? I know that if you push the strontium levels up too high that can upset invertebrates (including corals as they don't have spines and that is spine as in the anatomical structure not the lack of morality ).

Regards