My mom's and my once prolific mushroom garden has been dying in the past few weeks. My best guess? The stress from Hurricane Irma.
I'm still really confused about this though. In the days following Irma, they were fine. The first picture was actually taken at that point.
The water parameters are "perfect" according to the tank store. I don't know the exact numbers since I am away at college and my mom takes care of it at home.
Here's a timeline of events during and following Irma:
-fish and rock transported from a 10 gal to a cooler, holding about 7 gallons, with a different internal slightly weaker filter (made for a 5-gal)
-at my uncle's house (we stayed there because he was in a safer location) lost power for about 3 days, "tank" sustained with battery operated bubblers and only indirect natural light (I know that can lead to coral bleaching, but that does not appear to be what happened here)
-my mom's and my house still didn't have power so we went to a friend's place who did. At this point, my mom and I made the decision to take apart my 5-gallon freshwater tank and use it for our saltwater tank (the 5-gal was made for both fresh and salt). We did this because we couldn't set up our full 10-gal at the friend's house and because we had been thinking about it for a while.
-at this point we had our water tested and we were slightly low on pH, alkalinity, and calcium (we were unable to transport and use the supplements), but overall, the guy at the store said we had some of the best water he'd seen following the hurricane.
-after about a week, our house had power and we transported it back where is has stayed since.
So that's where we're at. My guesses what's wrong would be stress, change in flow, or the smaller mushrooms falling off and getting under a rock or rooting somewhere we can't find.
Does anyone have any input? Our mushroom garden is the main thing that my mom loves about our tank and with all the stress we've have with it, we are considering getting rid of it if we can't bring them back.
It should also be noted that the tank has some orange algae (or Cyanobacteria, I haven't seen it in person or seen many pictures) and the mushroom rock has quite a bit of hair algae as well.
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