Shrooms - Initializing on new stones

[masta]

[So how to a take a colony of my green or orange shrooms, and establish them on new stones? Can these critters be sliced up, rubber banded to rocks? How does the shroom propagate in nature?]

 

[charley75]

[Be careful what you ask for. I can't freakin stop mine from spreading. I'm pretty sure you can slice em and dice em. They are indestructable. I've been trying different ways to kill them, but nothing works.]

 

[masta]

[Can you explain a bit furhter please?
mine are growing really well, and I'd like to have some for the frag swap coming up soon.

I figure one or two polyps of each of my two color types (orange & green) will be suitable. So do these things eventualyl start to showup in other rocks in the aquarium, as to suggest they spew out something in the plankton layer that attaches elsewhere, or are these the type to spread their mat?]

 

[melev]

[They spread via Pedal Laceration. The mushroom grows up, moves across a rock while stretching its foot, then tears away from the original spot leaving behind a tissue mass. Within a few days, that puddle forms a small mound that begins to look like a upside down Reeces Peanut Butter Cup. Within a week or so, it will look like a little mushroom.

Creating frags in time for the Frag Swap in two weeks seems implausible.]

 

[TGamel]

@masta wrote:

There a couple different ways to do this, you can as mentioned by Marc, simply cut the head off of the stalk and then super glue the head to a new rock, cover with bridal veil or some type of soft mesh (not to tightly) and rubberband the mesh to the rock. the old stalk will sprout a new head, and the cutting will eventually attach to the new rock and you can remove the netting.

The other option is to slice the head of the mushroom in half down the center line and attach the new piece as previously mentioned. Make sure you make an even cut with a clean razor blade through the mouth of the mushroom for your best chance of success.

 

[Jaguar]

Yeah what they said. I'm just going to pry some off of the colonies I currently have and super glue them on a new rock rubble. They worked just fine for me the last time I did that. I have some that loose that I'll attach somewhere for the swap too.

 

[Kitty]

I dig mine out of the rock with a razor blade, getting off as much as I can, and in one piece. Then throw them into a container (plastic bowl) full of rubble. Cover the bowl with bridal veil, rubber band the veil, and put the whole thing into my 'fuge, which has reverse lighting from the main tank.

So far, I've given most of mine away (or sold them) so I only have about 6 in the rubble bin, but I haven't lost any, either. I can easily make more mushrooms this way, as I need to clean off a major rock in the main tank, anyway.