What am I doing wrong with Ricordia

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I have a 5 year old reef tank and have had success with a wide variety
of hard and soft corals. I have had problems with Ricordia however.
On several occasions I have purchased some very expensive and beautiful
blue ricordia. I have tried placing them in a variety of locations in
my tank ranging from high light (8" directly below 250 watt 10K HQI) to
low light (in shadows) and everywhere in between. What has happened is
that the ricordia tend to shrivel gradually to smaller and smaller
polyps, while also losing their color. I do feed DTs phytoplankton
every other day. Other mushrooms in my tank have thrived. I also dose
iodine. What am I doing wrong with ricordia?

[Dave Town]

Let me preface this with the fact that I have 3x175W MH and 2x160W
actinic tubes over my 135g aquarium. My ricordia were doing the same
thing yours were... until one day I came home from work and found that
the controler had failed to fire one of the MH lights, the one over
the ricordia. Let me say here that the ricordia had been in a shadowy
area at the bottom of the tank. With that one MH off, the polyps had
expanded much larger than normal, and looked great. I left that MH off
for the next few days, and decided that for the wellbeing of those
animals, I'd permanently leave the light at that end of the tank
turned off. They have since multiplied many times and I have many
ricordia in the darker end of my tank.

Don't know if this is your problem, but I hope it helps.

Dave Town

On 12 Jun 2005 19:33:46 -0700, wrote:

>I have a 5 year old reef tank and have had success with a wide variety
>of hard and soft corals. I have had problems with Ricordia however.
>On several occasions I have purchased some very expensive and beautiful
>blue ricordia. I have tried placing them in a variety of locations in
>my tank ranging from high light (8" directly below 250 watt 10K HQI) to
>low light (in shadows) and everywhere in between. What has happened is
>that the ricordia tend to shrivel gradually to smaller and smaller
>polyps, while also losing their color. I do feed DTs phytoplankton
>every other day. Other mushrooms in my tank have thrived. I also dose
>iodine. What am I doing wrong with ricordia?