What you are seeing here is literally the most expensive coral in the hobby today.
It is called a Bounce Mushroom, and one this size can sell for a house payment... on a
million dollar home.
In this video I’ll discuss the trendiness of super high end corals but look a bit closer
at what the deal is with these mushrooms.
For as long as I can remember there has always been a coral that people just went crazy for.
I understand it to some degree.
This hobby is not something people can do passively.
To do it well, it takes a passion, and that passion leads people to look for the next
best thing.
It goes in trends.
For a while it was all about Acropora.
Then people moved on to high end Zoanthids.
For the past few years, it’s been Chalice Corals.
It is now abundantly clear that the new king of coral hype is the bounce mushroom.
So what are bounce mushrooms exactly?
In short, they are Rhodactis corallimorphs just like these guys here.
Rhodactis mushrooms are incredibly diverse when it comes to coloration, size, and the
shape of the vesicles on their body.
They also tend to be very beginner friendly.
Rhodactis can tolerate less than pristine water conditions and are not finicky about
water flow or placement in the tank.
You do have to watch out a bit when it comes to lighting... which I will get to in a second
here.
If you give a mushroom coral too much light, bad things can happen.
To be fair, too much light on any coral is a bad thing, but mushrooms in particular can
form what are called oxide radicals and these white tumor-like growths appear on their face.
I don’t have a picture to show you, but they look kind of like...
THIS!
And that get’s me into a bit of story time.
This bounce mushroom is in Nathan Gist’s tank which I’ve shown several times on my
channel.
You would not believe the amount of grief I gave him when he first purchased it.
He paid an arm and a leg for what looked like a 1/2” cutting of it and I thought he was
straight nuts.
I mean seriously, it looks like it has a disease... but the joke’s on me!
He’s been propagating this mushroom for a few years now and this single mushroom more
than funds his continued enjoyment of the hobby let’s just say.
He’s now started a collection of different color morphs of these bounce mushrooms.
What some folks are wondering is are these mushrooms even real.
The hype is certainly real as people are paying a ton of money for them, but is it possible
they are just a nicely colored Rhodactis that gets these exaggerated vesicles when exposed
to certain tank conditions?
There was a recent article in reef builders that goes in that direction, and like I said,
the first time I saw one, I sort of assumed it was because of overexposure to light.
Lately though, I don’t know.
At Tidal Gardens, we have easily 50 different morphs of Rhodactis from just about every
geography and kept them under literally every type of lighting imaginable... for years and
if anything, I would consider them very consistent in their appearance.
They are not like SPS where they chance to something unrecognizable from tank to tank.
For sure, I never produced anything remotely similar to these bounce mushrooms.
A couple of my friends are in Okinawa doing genetic research on Zoanthids and Palythoa,
and I wonder if there are any labs doing similar taxonomy work on Corallimorphs.
I would be really interested to know whether these bounce mushrooms are genetically distinct
or if they are all closely related and their appearance is a result of tank conditions.
Normally I would say it’s not cost effective to do a genetic test on a coral before purchase,
but for the types of dollars being thrown around for these guys... you might want to
know who the daddy is...
Alright high rollers, there you have it.
What do you think?
Are you a big fan of these mushrooms?
Let me know in the comments below!