"jawbreaker" type discoma - zoas causing splotches?

[Lonelyreef]

I would have to agree. A person in our local club also has an online store and is able to buy wholesale. When he wants one of these shrooms they always come on rocks that are full of zoonanthids. while the zooas may be causing the different color. The brilliant oranges and reds are the shrooms natural color and what makes them really shine. I finally got to see a jawbreaker in person it was orange with red. Even with no lights at all it still had a certain glow about it.

 

[benny z]

recently i saw a really crazy unique mushroom listing from a vendor who said he found it randomly in an old rubble vat he had mixed with zoas. i'm now wondering if it was a plain mushroom when it was tossed in there with the zoas, and left alone over time it's morphed due to the zoa contact?

one thing i noticed with my red ones growing over the green zoas - they are actually growing OVER the zoas. it appears my largest mushroom, which happens to have the most purple splotching to it, has actually "sucked up" some zoas into its foot. i was examining it closely the other night. on the underside, the big foot has a long zoa stalk coming out of it, attached to the rock...almost like the foot is "eating" it. i'll have to try to get a picture.

 

[Lonelyreef]

Well zooas are posionous and although not every zooa is deadly i would venture to guess that all of them carry some kind of poison. So the effects we see in the shroom could be a result of the zooas posioning the shroom in a manner of speaking

 

[slojmn]

Thats not quit correct.

Mystic tie dye: (Pimples) yellow base or redorange base with red,green and sometimes some purple
True Jawbreaker: (No pimples) Only Yellow and red
Vietnam "Jawbreaker": (Pimples) Yellow,red and green
Jawbropper "was named by 1stopcorals" Is bright orange with green (yet no other color documented)
I couldn´t finde the name for the red with purple mushoom.

Greetz Corey

Interesting name and color connection. My "true" Jawbreaker has red, gold/yellow, green and purple.....The purple is only visible with a darn magnifying glass but it is finally coming in after 4 years and the shroom is 3"+ in diameter

 

[benny z]

Interesting name and color connection. My "true" Jawbreaker has red, gold/yellow, green and purple.....The purple is only visible with a darn magnifying glass but it is finally coming in after 4 years and the shroom is 3"+ in diameter

i'm curious - has yours produced babies?

seems to be mixed reports of how surprising quickly - or painfully slowly - these mushrooms gain colors and reproduce.

i saw some at a retailer in chicago a few weeks ago, and was inquiring. he wanted $300 for the largest one (solid yellow w/ just a couple red splotches), or $150 for a baby (solid yellow). i told him i would be interested in a baby if they showed any more colors, and that it would likely be 3+ years before it had additional colored splotches beyond red based on what i have followed online. he replied that they were all actually off-springs from one of their clients, who has been having a very rapid reproduction rate and said the colors come in quickly. sales tactic possibly, but i try to take in as much info as i can and this was interesting to me.

 

[shawy2510]

I got mine from Joe knows reefs & it is a small mushroom atm but there is quite a few spots / areas where red is coming through. I do not expect any other colours to come for another year or so when its bigger.

 

[Hypnotize]

with all due respect, i don't want to get caught up in the name game with these guys. imo they are all the same type of discoma from either tonga or vietnam (possibly other collection locations). the more recent ones are coming from vientam and we are seeing them in three distinct base colors which i will call yellow, orange, and red. i will agree that the yellow typically has red splotches, but may also have orange, green, and purple bits. i believe they all have "pimples", at least to some degree - possibly some more than others depending on age/size and other conditions.

i've seen a few different names now for the orange one w/ green. and i'm with you in not yet having seen a name for the red w/ purple.

like i said, don't want to get caught up in the naming, as that isn't what this thread is about. it's about how these mushrooms have possibly acquired the colored splotching we have come to adore. ...and about how we might experiment to produce even more bizarre color patterns.

cheers!

Hi here is a good writeup from someone who owns one of the first imported Mysitc tie dye

There is 4 lineage of Jawbreaker mushrooms that I'm aware of and I believe all 4 originated in CA as they were first imported here.

A. Original Jawbreaker mushroom coral that was imported over 7 years ago, this is what everyone refers to as the true Jawbreaker and also as Mystery TieDye mushroom coral. These start off as neon red orange and then become various shades of golden neon orange. It has a distinct texture to it, and most develop red between 6 to 12 months (some earlier) and green anytime after 18 months (but more typically 3 to 4 years). Don't know when the purple develops. This original Jawbreaker mushroom is slow growing and our first generation didn't drop it's first baby until 2 years of age, thereafter, the babies do drop much more polyps and more often than our original mother (who is the first daughter of the original import). This original lineage, the polyps can get very large, my avatar is the very first daughter to the Mystery TieDye/Jawbreaker mushroom and it is 6" across. Overall, very slow growing is what has been keeping it's value so high. Locally, we have this coral on our local reef club's "DBTC - don't break the chain", but there's a long waitlist to get one because it's so slow growing. It could be several years before your number is up with DBTC.

B. two other later lineages usually only gets to no larger than 3" across and only colors in neon orange and red. the best we could figure out is our local stores named these Jawbreakers as they didn't know any different and through they were the same as the original import. no green or purple on these guys.

C. latest Vietnam Jawbreaker mushroom that just arrive this year is smooth skin and multi-colors up front. It is a beautiful coral, but nothing close to the original Jawbreaker mushroom coral from 7 years ago. The 2 are so distinctly different. I have a feeling that this might be a fast growing mushroom, but don't know as I don't own one.

Which one is better looking is in the eye of the beholder. What determines the price has always been supply vs demand. The demand for the original Jawbreaker is higher than the supply, so the prices stay up. When enough people have this original Jawbreaker and are dropping enough new babies to supply the demand, prices will come down.

My question is why does everyone importing a new multi-color mushroom coral have to name it Jawbreaker? why couldn't they choose a different name since there is already the original Jawbreaker imported into USA over 7 years ago??? :-D There's enough confusion as it is and I get this question more often than any other question. I think I saw another name for the new Vietnam Jawbreaker in Europe and they call it Skittles, like the candy???

 

[benny z]

thanks - that is a good bit of history on the lineage side of things.

getting back to what i'm theorizing might be happening with these mushroom types...

i pulled my rock with red/purple splotch mushrooms and took some photos in sunlight.

first, this is the back side of the rock showing two of the three mushrooms. you can see how closely/on top of the zoas they are growing.

next, i peeled up the small mushroom a bit - it was mostly loose anyway. it was resting right on top of the zoa polyp below it, and the part still attached appears to be attached to zoa stalk. i am just beginning to see what look like purple splotches beginning on this shroom, which did not yet have any when i received it.

and finally, this is the big mushroom. it has a lot of purple splotching in particular along one edge, so i peeled back some zoas around its base at that edge to see what is going on there.

this anecdotal evidence has me believing my suspicions may be correct.

 

[Hypnotize]

are the zoas around your mushroom purple?

 

[benny z]

nope - they are green.

look at the photo of this one, though - seems the zoas colors are repeated in that one?

does the base color make a difference in how the zooxanthellae reacts and reflects? possibly?

i don't know - it's just so very interesting to me.

 

[Hypnotize]

My thoughts were maybe its like grafting. If u put two of the same typ of zoa with different colors next to each other they will prob moph a new color polyp. So they Mushroom dosen´t take the color of the zoa.

 

[GHill762]

interesting.. following.

 

[benny z]

i am half tempted to cut up one of the smaller mushrooms and rub some of these zoas on them. i'd place them together with some zoas in a separate dish to heal.

 

[Hypnotize]

i would love to experiment with jawbreakers and other discosomas but they are allmost impossible to find in EU...

 

[RichieT]

I've seen dozens if not hundreds of babies tank raised that have zero color other than the gold/yellow. No zoas on nor around them. Some get red and green some don't. I've also seen in the same colony babies that start with red and green pigment.

I think we are looking at genetics here not grafting or green pigment infection.


I'm specifically talking about jawbreakers.

 

[benny z]

thanks richie. do you know if those babies were all wild collects? or descendants of other known multi-color parents?

cheers!

 

[shawy2510]

i would love to experiment with jawbreakers and other discosomas but they are allmost impossible to find in EU...

I am in the EU but had to order from the US to get mine glad I did as even at the small size it is atm it is stunning.

 

[RichieT]

thanks richie. do you know if those babies were all wild collects? or descendants of other known multi-color parents?

cheers!

They are from the original jawbreaker. Some had parents with absolutely no color that produced babies that were very red.

 

[ryanwongg]

very interested in whether the z&p's affect jawbreakers! rastas would be a good candidate since they have both green and red?

 

[Slydain]

I have to be on the genetics side of the debate until someone offers a little more than some hopeful conjecture. Zoas come in so many colors yet the only the colors on lineage are showing up. With the different types (tie dye, jawbreaker, etc) the only offset colors are the ones that the parents/family had, yet nothing "new". Going with the idea that maybe somehow the absorption of the zoa/zooanthelle from a zoa might trigger the colors to come out would be more feasible than the zoas having a direct impact on new colors through grafting or something like it.

But I have to admit, that would be cool to be able to morph the colors you want to see in a mushroom like that.