Red Rhodactis Mushrooms detaching from rock

[MPERL]

10 year old 210 gal mixed reef. Suddenly our many nice sized red rhodactis mushrooms have multiplied, shrunk in size and are detaching from their rocks. I have a tank service and they say chemistry is good/normal. What can I do to save these nice corals. I see 4 that have detached and are on the sand bed, with 2 more beginning to detach.

 

[lapin]

I have ones that detach all the time. Once the colony gets too big for the rock they are on some fall off. Sometimes they attach to other rocks. Sometimes they just float around on the sand for months.

 

[anemoneanatomy]

My hypothesis would be that they are fleeing the rock because there are too many others of their kind in the same spot and/or this is a mechanism that in the wild would aid their distribution via the current blowing them to a new rocky outcropping where they can anchor. I can't find any articles on rhodactis allelopathy or dissemination patterns in the wild to vaildate this, however.

If the detaching corals look healthy, but have shrunk in on themselves a bit I wouldn't worry about them too much, as the shrinking is a stress response and it should reverse in time. If the corals that remain encrusted are continuously shrinking, however, that's a problem, and I'd call it out to your tank service fellows.