Have you ever had this happen????

Reefin’doug · Mar 3, 2020

So first thing first. I travel for work and you’ll understand why I’m bringing this up in a few minutes. I have a pretty good care routine for my tank and everything I have in my tank is doing great and thriving. But today as I get home from work I do my visual inspection of my tank to see if anything has changed that I can see. And I’m looking at all my corals and I just scanned them a few times and I couldn’t find my mushroom. No where to be found in the tank. I’m searching pretty hard at this point because I really didn’t want to get my hands wet to find this coral. So I finally located this little booger up underneath my live rock..... so I thought ok cool I found it! Now I gotta get it out and put him back where he was. So about and hour or so passes and I figured it was time to get my hands wet to relocate this coral where he wandered from.(hermit crab or snail moved it I’m assuming) so anyway this mushroom is a deep purple with nazy blue spots on it... now this is where I get confused. I reached my hand in to grab this coral and pulled it out and it’s HOT PINK. Like the most vibrant pink I’ve ever seen in my life. It doesn’t appear to be in stress it was open and was about the size of a 50 cent piece. All of my other coral are striving and doing great. Water quality is tip top. The only thing I can guess is it was because the lighting, it was tucked up under the rock with no light. But I’m not sure. Don’t seem to be stressed. It enjoying life in just a different color!!! Any thoughts!?

The Aquatic Arsenal · Mar 3, 2020

Well that is interesting. I can't say that I have seen that happen myself.

will25u · Mar 3, 2020

How long do you think it was under the rock?

Copingwithpods · Mar 3, 2020

I've had this happen with purple Yuma mushrooms and some common recordia. Some stay put their whole lives and others will vanish into a rock and never come out I swear some mushrooms are the dumbest things ever. 8 months in the same spot, happy and splitting every now and then and all of a sudden it's like "aight ima head out" crawl in a rock with no light and no flow shrink up and die. Specially yumas which is what I think you are describing. Mine was deep purple during the day and at night as it shrunk up it got violet pink. I can't keep yumas happy to safe my life, tried twice and failed twice so for now I'll leave them at the store.

I have a red shroom that crawled about 6 inches over 3 rocks and survived 40 days in an over hang with very little light only to come back out and find a spot it liked so I know they are capable of it, some are just....... Special.