Filefish eat mushrooms and palys?
 

I have been unsuccessful in in clearing my liverock of mushrooms and palys. Can't scrape them off, as they just shrink into tiny holes and come back out when I am not looking... Used to think they were pretty, but consider them a scourge now. They keep invading my SPS and taking up room where I could otherwise place other more desirable corals.

I don't need the filefish for aiptasia, as my Pearlscales take care of that. But they don't do anything for my mushrooms and palys plague.

If the filefish do eat the mushrooms and palys, was thinking of rotating liverock through my QT, and hopefully the filefish will clean them off.

On my second filefish (had one for years) and never seen them go after any corals, just aiptasia.

Our filefish will eat zoas (I still don't know the difference between zoas & palys though lol), I still see lots of mushrooms in the tank it is in tho. Oh and ours eats majanos too :biggrin:, I know that's not what you asked Walter.

mine doesn't touch mushrooms or palys though wish would (at least the mushrooms)

Or are there other fish that eat mushrooms and palys (similar but bigger than zoas, Ian) like maybe another butterfly fish? Again, this is for my QT tank, not by DT.

My Filefish never touch zoa's , mushroom also big polyps he hate it :)

I wish mine would, he cleaned up the aiptasia but hasn't touched the ugly palys (or anything else)in his tank.

Dogface puffer , I watched one destroy anything that lives lol including aiptasia mojanoes pallys and red mushrooms all chewed to the rock :)

My puffer ate all my green hair algae

My filefish eat leathers.. No clue if they would eat mushrooms

I'll be your "filefish" and take all your mushrooms :)

Dogface puffer sounds interesting. I understand they eat a lot, period... And probably grow fast, too. This is for a 33g QT tank, and would never put one in my DT. And his time, and duty, would probably be fairly temporary, too. The reason I was hoping for a filefish is that they are in some demand as aiptasia eaters, and should be easy to pass off to someone else.

You can have them, if you can tell me how to get them off of my live rocks. And are you sure you know what you would be getting into with these down the road?

It sounds like it's hit and miss, but I had a filefish for a month and it ate every last zoa polyp in my tank.
Didn't touch the mushrooms though.
I did however have two peppermint shrimp devour an entire colony of hairy mushrooms a few years ago

I resorted to manual removal with some palys, and that seems to work. But not with mushrooms, they just shrink up inside the rock and pop out again a day or two later. I am also trying Aiptasia X on some mushrooms. They do seem to disappear again. But will they return (like the aiptasia does after a few days). What a scourge these things are (to my SPS)!...

My next step might be to remove the rock and try chisel them out (getting really desperate now)...

I have the same problem with the paly's and have a pile of green rodactus mushrooms, thought they were nice when I brought home a couple. Now I got way too many greens. :wink2:

Get an angelfish

Epoxy them over or super glue them they need photosynthesis in order to survive they can only go so long without it , a thin sheet of coral putty and a few weeks later pull it off no more mushrooms or anything photosynthetic .

Super glue works to but is time consuming lol

I have an angelfish, doesn't touch them, or any other coral...

I was thinking of doing that, too, but didn't want a bunch of coral putty all over my live rock. But if I can pull it off, might be worth a try. This is only for rocks with just a few mushrooms. There are others that are hopelessly covered, and will have to be removed permanently.

Have you tried chiseling the parts of the rock that they are on? I know it doesn't sound pretty but it may be a quick and easy solution. I can pick them up tonight if you can haha. :wink:

Yes, that is another option for some cases, and am considering it. But not practical for those rocks that are completely covered.