Mushroom problems

[greebs]

I'm kind of baffled. I thought from reading posts that mushrooms are some of the easiest to maintain. In my 55 gallon, I had a rock with several blue and one rock with several red mushrooms. They had been in my tank for about a month and while I wouldn't say they were thriving, they were holding their own and opening nicely most days.
I had a rather poor lighting system previously as I had just one fluorescent 10k 50/50 reef bulb. A couple weeks ago, I bought new lights and now have 65 watt smartlamp power compacts.
Seems the mushrooms reacted to the new lighting within a day and went downhill. The blues are all gone now. The red ones I'm afraid have their days numbered as well.
The tank has been operating for about 6 months now. The tests (ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, ph) all come back showing everything acceptable. My three fish (yellow tang, clarkei clown, blue damsel) are all looking well. Only other corals are some button polyps and some star polyps, both which seem to be doing okay.
Any ideas on what could be the problem. It doesn't seem to make sense that the problems coincided with the light change, but I can't think of anything else that happened that would have caused it?

 

[jillian ayers]

While I don't know much about lights, I have heard that mushrooms need light-medium lighting. Possible that yours was too strong? If they were doing good in the lower lighting, than that was probably just what they needed. You might wanna place them somewhere where the light doesn't reach very well. I'm sure someone else will chime in and help out.

 

[jake22]

Do you have only one 65 watt light on your tank?

 

[greebs]

I have two 65 w pc's

 

[mbuckley]

From reading other post I think your problem could be you shocked them with 2 much light. You jumped from 1 25-40 watt (I'm guessing based on 1 NO bulb) to 130 watts. Try moving the mushrooms lower in the tank and/or unplugging 1 of your bulbs for a week or 2 until they get adjusted to the increased light. Then maybe only turn the other on for half the time. This might help the mushrooms get adjusted to the additional light. Just my .02 cents though...

 

[hawkypro]

Greebs, do you add iodine supplements to your water. I was having the same problem and started to add iodine and they started to open. this is what helped me. Check this web site out www.garf.org these tanks are simply the most stricking ive seen and are world renowned. Her method is the method that i have used for quite some time now and is very simple to follow.