mushrooms in a blender

[fentochris]

I had recently heard that if you take a few mushrooms and some of your tank water, blend it up and poor it back in your tank...Mushrooms will grow like crazy.. anyone have any ideas about this. I just find this hard to believe. thanks

[Chad]

well, yes.. it could work if the pieces had enough to them.. but I certainly would not poor all that gunk back into my tank! .. your better off just slicing a few by hand if you want lots of mushrooms. Besides, I find they propogate enough on their own.

[AJ_77]

When you move to your second tank, it's likely you will make sure it has few or no mushrooms - trust me, you'll have more than enough shrooms soon enough.

[Samw]

Are you sure? I heard that was a myth. Someone tried it and nothing lived.

[Willow]

Originally Posted by Samw

Are you sure? I heard that was a myth. Someone tried it and nothing lived.

sounds like a myth for adam and jamie to bust.

[TrailFish]

Regardless of whether it works or not, you don't want that many mushrooms trust me After loosing a number of LPS and having my tank overun in the last 3 - 4 years I will definitely think twice about adding mushrooms. If you want them, try to keep them in an isolated area or "island" in the tank. That way you can catch them as they bail onto the sand and sell them to other unsuspecting reefers

[krissyfish20]

Haha myth busters cool!
Anyways, the cells of mushrooms are totipotent, which is a biological term meaning that every single cell of the organism has the ability to become a clone of the parent organism. Plants have this ability too this is why you can create invitro carrots etc. Stem cells also fall into this category and is why they are being used in stem cell research because they might be able to be targetted to become certain organs etcetc.
I'm not exactly sure if this would work on the musrooms in the blender, but it definitely has the potential to work because of the totipotency. Remeber the blender will destroy and break apart some of the cells, but if even a few cells survive the beating, they could very well have the potential to grow a clone of the parent mushroom. Not every single cell of the surviving cells will become a daughter mushroom, (think: Dolly the cloned sheep was 1 out of 277 tries of sheep mammary gland cells that worked), but it really could work. The best thing would be to try this yourself (maybe in a small isolated tank in case it does and you overrun the tank with shrooms), and let everyone know what happens. What's sacrificing ONE mushroom if it doesn't work anyways?

[Chad]

So, to sum it up .. ya it could work.. give it a go in some experimental tank like Krissy says.. btw that was very informative Krissy..

on a side note, I have ripped Ricordia off of rocks, and a little tiny sliver was left.. I left the sliver on purpose knowing full well it would come right back (this is how I propogate them).

[Willow]

wow, thats cool krissy.

[Invigor]

anyone see the myth busters last week where they threw a hair dryer in the tub and it started to pump water?