Mushroom Coral Deep Dive: Rhodactis, Discosoma, and Ricordea

The Underrated Stars of the Reef Tank

Mushroom corals don't get the hype they deserve. While everyone focuses on designer zoas and rainbow acros, mushrooms quietly look gorgeous, multiply for free, and ask for basically nothing in return.

The three main types — rhodactis, discosoma, and ricordea — each have their own character.

Rhodactis

The big chunky ones, sometimes called elephant ear mushrooms. They can reach 10-15cm across in good conditions.

Key traits:

• Come in greens, blues, purples, and striking multicolour morphs
• Split reliably — one rhodactis can become a dozen over a couple of years
• Can catch and eat fairly large food, including mysis shrimp

Placement: Low light, low-to-medium flow. Shady spots, overhangs, lower rockwork — that's their happy place. One word of warning: large rhodactis can eat small fish like gobies. Not common, but worth knowing.

Discosoma

The classic flat, smooth-disc mushrooms. They come in an incredible range of colours — solid reds, greens, blues, spotted, striped, and everything in between. Arguably the lowest maintenance coral available.

They propagate by splitting and by pedal laceration — dropping small bits of tissue that grow into new mushrooms in random spots around the tank.

Bounce mushrooms are a rhodactis variant with raised bubble-like vesicles. Some rare colour morphs command hundreds of pounds, though common colours remain very affordable.

Ricordea

The fancy ones. Ricordea florida (Caribbean) has rounder, uniform bubble tentacles in gorgeous oranges, greens, and blues — the hardier of the two. Ricordea yuma (Indo-Pacific) has more varied tentacle shapes and often more intense colours, but is more finicky and slower to settle.

Both prefer moderate light, low-to-moderate flow, and benefit from supplemental feeding.

Tips for Mushroom Keepers

1. Don't move them once settled. Mushrooms hate being relocated
2. Create a mushroom island — an isolated rock surrounded by sand stops them spreading where they're not wanted
3. Detaching means unhappy. If a mushroom lets go, conditions were wrong in that spot
4. Rubble frags work great. Small bits of rock with mushrooms attached are cheap and easy to place

Find mushroom corals from UK sellers on Reefsy — multi-packs of mixed shrooms on a single rock are often the best deals.