Ultra Red Mushroom – Discosoma sp. – Single Polyp

Mushrooms are small, round anemones that show many different colors and patterns. Individuals form compact colonies over reef rock which resemble some hard corals. The surface of the polyp can be tightly beaded like a carpet anemone or smooth in appearance. The color of surface can be striped, solid in color, edged with a different color, or have any other number of patterns and variations. The mushrooms range in color from brown to green to blue and in rare cases orange or red.

These mushrooms are carnivorous and photosynthetic. While they will take food from the water column and even feed on larger items like brine shrimp, they benefit from higher lighting and will show brighter colors under more intense light. They should be given ample space in aquariums as they may damage other corals with prolonged contact. It is common for an individual mushroom to come off of a rock and settle somewhere else in the aquarium or for a mushroom to split into multiple mushroom to spread or start a new colony.