mushrooms in a blender

[fentochris]

I had recently heard that if you take a few mushrooms and some of your tank water, blend it up and poor it back in your tank...Mushrooms will grow like crazy.. anyone have any ideas about this. I just find this hard to believe. thanks

[Chad]

well, yes.. it could work if the pieces had enough to them.. but I certainly would not poor all that gunk back into my tank! .. your better off just slicing a few by hand if you want lots of mushrooms. :biggrin: Besides, I find they propogate enough on their own.

[AJ_77]

When you move to your second tank, it's likely you will make sure it has few or no mushrooms - trust me, you'll have more than enough shrooms soon enough.

[Samw]

Are you sure? I heard that was a myth. Someone tried it and nothing lived.

[Willow]

Are you sure? I heard that was a myth. Someone tried it and nothing lived.

sounds like a myth for adam and jamie to bust.

[TrailFish]

Regardless of whether it works or not, you don't want that many mushrooms trust me :exclaim: After loosing a number of LPS and having my tank overun in the last 3 - 4 years I will definitely think twice about adding mushrooms. If you want them, try to keep them in an isolated area or "island" in the tank. That way you can catch them as they bail onto the sand and sell them to other unsuspecting reefers :biggrin:

[krissyfish20]

Haha myth busters cool!
Anyways, the cells of mushrooms are totipotent, which is a biological term meaning that every single cell of the organism has the ability to become a clone of the parent organism. Plants have this ability too this is why you can create invitro carrots etc. Stem cells also fall into this category and is why they are being used in stem cell research because they might be able to be targetted to become certain organs etcetc.
I'm not exactly sure if this would work on the musrooms in the blender, but it definitely has the potential to work because of the totipotency. Remeber the blender will destroy and break apart some of the cells, but if even a few cells survive the beating, they could very well have the potential to grow a clone of the parent mushroom. Not every single cell of the surviving cells will become a daughter mushroom, (think: Dolly the cloned sheep was 1 out of 277 tries of sheep mammary gland cells that worked), but it really could work. The best thing would be to try this yourself (maybe in a small isolated tank in case it does and you overrun the tank with shrooms), and let everyone know what happens. What's sacrificing ONE mushroom if it doesn't work anyways? ;)

[Chad]

So, to sum it up :eek: .. ya it could work.. give it a go in some experimental tank like Krissy says.. btw that was very informative Krissy..

on a side note, I have ripped Ricordia off of rocks, and a little tiny sliver was left.. I left the sliver on purpose knowing full well it would come right back (this is how I propogate them).

[Willow]

wow, thats cool krissy.

[Invigor]

anyone see the myth busters last week where they threw a hair dryer in the tub and it started to pump water?

[Samw]

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=74031&perpage=25&highlight=mushroom%20and%20blender&pagenumber=1

No mushrooms regrew after 1 month.

Any success stories out there?

[sumpfinfishe]

I'm sure the blender thing would work just fine with a quick jog on low for a whack of small tissue, however if your puree the shrooms to the point that there is no living tissue left and simply just sludge then I could see it not working :rolleyes:

[krissyfish20]

You're welcome! :) I'm not really sure about having small chunks of tissue or not. Theoretically you only need one cell, so as long as you have some microscopic cells floating around in the solution you technically could have a mushroom grow out of that cell. When you liquify the musroom you most likely are disrupting a lot of the cells causing their cytoplasm to leak out which would kill the cell (you'd be disrupting the cell's membrane). But if any cells survived (you wouldnt be able to see them cuz they're microscopic) you could get mushrooms. But if you did leave small chunks in the solution you would for sure know that some of the cells weren't killed, and would have an even greater chance of musroom regrowth. You also have to think about denaturation of the proteins in the mushroom. Heat isn't the only thing that denatures proteins causing inactivation. If you stir proteins too much (aka the really high stirring and blending in the blender) it can also cause the proteins to turn inside out and misfold and denature. This would cause inactivation and the cells wouldn't survive and create baby mushrooms. I'm really interested to see if it works now. In all theory one cell should cause one mushroom regardless of large chunks in solution or not. People haven't had success trying it, but i wonder if the feat can be done. Cheers.

[medic_eva]

Are you sure? I heard that was a myth. Someone tried it and nothing lived.

sounds like a myth for adam and jamie to bust.

we have to make them do it!!!!! reefers unite!!!! :lol:

[danny zubot]

anyone see the myth busters last week where they threw a hair dryer in the tub and it started to pump water?

I saw that one.

I think a better way would be to chop with a sharp chef's knife instead of a blender. I agree that mincing would kill too much cellular tissue. In my new tank I'm going to build a little bowl in my tank out of small peices of live rock, that way the shrooms have something to grasp without being blown all over the tank. I'll call it mushroom soup! :razz: Chop and serve!