Sarcophyton glaucum (Toadstool Mushroom Leather Coral)

Source: liveaquaria.com

QUICK STATS

• Care Level: Easy
  
• Temperament: Peaceful
  
• Lighting: Moderate to High
  
• Waterflow: Medium
  
• Placement: All
  
• Water Conditions: 72-78° F, dKH 8-12, pH 8.1-8.4, sg 1.023-1.025
  
• Color Form: Tan
  
• Origin: Fiji, Indo-Pacific, Maldives
  
• Family: Alcyoniidae
  
• Insert Date: 14 November 2009

The Toadstool Mushroom Leather Coral is referred to as Sarcophyton Coral, Mushroom, Leather, or Trough Corals. They are found in various shades of brown, tan or green, with white or gold polyps. It is difficult to identify many species because they all have the similar appearance of a mushroom or toadstool, each with a distinct stalk and capitulum (cap). As they grow older, they develop a folded appearance.
The Toadstool Mushroom Leather Corals are relatively peaceful, but adequate space should be provided between them and other corals in the reef aquarium. Some can produce toxins which are harmful to other reef inhabitants. The brown Sarcophyton Leather Corals from Idonesia and Tonga are easy to maintain in the reef aquarium and make an excellent coral for the beginning through expert reef aquarist. Toadstool Mushroom Leather Corals require medium to high lighting combined with medium to strong water movement. For continued good health, they will also require the addition of iodine, strontium, and other trace elements to the water.

Culturing by the experienced hobbyist is often accomplished by cutting off a portion of the Coral's crown and attaching that piece to live rock or placing it in the sandy bottom of the reef aquarium.

The symbiotic algae zooxanthellae hosted within its body provides the majority of its nutritional needs from the light driven process of photosynthesis. It will also benefit from additional food such as micro-plankton, baby brine shrimp, or foods designed for filter feeding invertebrates.

It is normally shipped attached to a small piece of live rock or rubble.

Links:
http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/corals/Green-Toadstool.php
http://www.reeflex.net/tiere/567_Sarcophyton_glaucum.htm
http://www.reefcorner.com/SpecimenSheets/sarcophyton.htm

First pictures of the Mushroom Leather Coral

Some more pictures of the coral with the other inhabitants

Added more corals to the tank

The lower mushroom seems to be growing bigger and bigger, the main mushroom is also doing great, except for the big white part on it's foot (probably eaten by fish?). Now it is also showing a bump on it's foot, looks like another mushroom is growing from there? Going to check on forums what this is.



Also made a movie starring the toadstool mushroom. You can see the bump, and also how much all the fishes like being around it (especially the cave behind it).

Yesterday during cleaning we also cleaned the mushroom, and turned it a bit to have a better view at what the bumps on the back where. It really seems to be new mushrooms growing (two of them). Not sure yet if this could damage the mushroom itself, I know of plants who die when they have new parts growing out of them. Have checked on severall forums if anyone knows this, and what to do with it. So now it's just wait and see how this turns out.

The two new mushrooms are growing rapidly, I asked on some forums, and it doesn't seem to affect the mushroom in any way. Of course later when they are bigger you can cut them loose and plant them somewhere else, which I probably will do.
Now here are some new pictures and a movie. Also have a "night" shot of the mushroom, looks pretty cool if you ask me

More parts are growing from the foot of the mushroom, now there are three clearly visible and I thought I saw some more. Unsure if I should remove them and when, thinking of using them to create new mushrooms...but we will see in time.

More bumps keep showing up, and they are all growing great. We teased the toadstool a bit, by removing him from the water to kill the sea anemone. The toadstool didnt like it a lot, but after a few days he showed greatly again.

The foot doesnt look very good, the small parts are doing great however. The coral in front of the mushroom is also growing fast and moving close to the mushroom. Need to find out what kind of coral this is.

Lost one of its fragments, that is living his own life now.

The toadstool mushroom is still strong and big. It has a lot of small fragments now, two of them growing pretty big already. I’m going to leave the small fragments alone, unless they start to be in the way of each other or break by accident like one part already did.

I don’t think I will be moving the toadstool mushroom a lot. He is doing so well where he is now, just want to try and move him away from the glass a little, so I can clean the glass easier.
If I find the small fragment again I will give him a place on one of the sides towards the polyps. And maybe, just maybe, if I don’t find the fragment I will create a new one.

Got a reaction from someone on youtube on one of the movies made from the toadstool mushroom. It's something I hear from more people

gorgeous specimen! these are one of my favorite corals, and they are so easy to care for! great tank.

The Toadstool is becoming a bit of a problem, he is doing too well. It might become too big for the aquarium, or might already be too big. As far as I can think of we have four options:

• Do nothing and wait and see how it goes
  
• Sell it, but both me and my girlfriend aren’t a fan of that
  
• Cut a piece of it and try to create a new toadstool from it, girlfriend still has doubts…and me also little
  
• Buy a bigger aquarium, unfortunately my girlfriend already said she didn’t want that option :p
  

So it’s still a discussion point….

As expected there where two Sea Anemones on the rock, so we had to boil them out. I had to hold up the Toadstool while my girlfriend injected boiling water onto the Sea Anemones. Think we got them both

Moved it out of the aquarium already again, it is loosing his skin or dying. But one thing is for sure, he creates a lot of mess, so moved him in quarantine, hopefully he recovers from there. He doesn't look really good, but according to one of the forums I'm on this could just be shedding skin...so we just wait a bit and see.

The Toadstool is looking very bad, I don’t think he has a long time to go this way. The values in the aquarium are getting worse with rising Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate. But I still hope he will survive it all and return in the main aquarium. Let’s just see how he makes it through the week.

I got a reaction from Patrick_NL on the Zeewaterforum on the status of the toadstool. He said that I should give it time, it's polyps are still open, let's hope he is right.

Z'n poliepen staan nog wel uit.. ik zou hem nog even de tijd geven...

Still looking worse, hope to change the water today and hope this helps him a bit again.

The toadstool is really gone, it has fallen so far apart that I don’t see any hope for it anymore. We already expected it so we already got a new toadstool, but it’s not as big as this one was. It will be missed, it was a real eyecatcher.