Are mushrooms worth aquaculturing?

rogersb · Mar 6, 2023

I'll be starting a frag tank soon and am considering growing out softies. I do mostly euphyllia with a few other LPS and zoas in my display, but I want to be able to offer more at swaps than the roughly 70 different pieces I have in my display. The thing is, I don't know if they grow fast enough for what I plan on doing. I'm thinking about a $20 cap on the price, so I'm not talking about the OG here.

Bucs20fan · Mar 6, 2023

Mushrooms are IN right now, and have been for a while. When treated right, they grow stupid fast, some species to pest proportions. Get your hands on some multi colored, red, or orange ones. Jawbreakers are selling like hot cakes right now, and you can find vendors selling them under 100 a pop if you look hard enough.

Tired · Mar 6, 2023

Pick some nice shrooms to start with, and there's definitely a market for that. Maybe see if you can find those neat leopard spot ones, or something else that's pretty to look at without being one of the really hyped-up ones.

Cthulukelele · Mar 6, 2023

As a general rule discosoma grow faster than rhodactis, but certain rhodactis like green hairy mushrooms grow even faster. I'm generally team don't buy "investment" coral. If you like something, grow it to propagate it. If you don't, that money never fixes having a tank you don't like looking at. In a frag tank it's a little difference, but at the end of the day most people aren't making a ton of money and frag tanks mostly serve as coral grow out tanks

ScubaFish802 · Mar 6, 2023

I have some discus mushrooms that are spreading so fast it is starting to become concerning. As far as fast growing corals, mushrooms are likely somewhere towards the start of the list.
Now, that being said. I don't think there is any real money in growing and selling a boat load of cheap mushrooms, if you're looking to make money there are some hot mushrooms that are in right now, but all are pretty much in the hundreds of dollars

rogersb · Mar 7, 2023

ScubaFish802 said:
I have some discus mushrooms that are spreading so fast it is starting to become concerning. As far as fast growing corals, mushrooms are likely somewhere towards the start of the list.
Now, that being said. I don't think there is any real money in growing and selling a boat load of cheap mushrooms, if you're looking to make money there are some hot mushrooms that are in right now, but all are pretty much in the hundreds of dollars

As of right now I go to one swap a year with my 5 gallon swap tank. I do around 60 frags and make around $3k. During the year I need to sell more pieces because of growth but not enough to make it worth going to another swap(roughly $1k). If I could grow enough mushrooms to get to that 60 - 70 frags that will fit in my swap tank, I could do 2 swaps.

Part of my line of thinking is that it would be nicer to do 2 swaps and sell all I need to sell vs 1 swap and then having people come to my house, meeting them in parking lots, etc. So, if I can have 10 or so different mother mushrooms and they give me a handful of babies each, that's 50 more frags, getting me to that 2nd swap. The increase in sales dollars is small, but might save me those hassles I mentioned earlier.