Please help with my coral

luceym · Nov 23, 2021

Hi every body, I recently bought my first corals and as we all do i learn along the way. The light i had for my aquarium was mainly white and the weird thing is my knopia polyps were doing really well. I wasn't told to dip the coral and that is another thing. I purchased a much better light which has 6 colours as opposed to one and the knopia poly coral was as fluffy and grassy and since the new light half of it closed which was two days ago. So I bought coral dip, dipped my polyp coral with a couple of others I had as I read much more about dipping which I wasn't told by the local fish store. I used seachem dip. As the polyp has already grown onto the live rock I had to hold the rock upside down in the solution with the ccoralnot getting barely any life rock submerged just the coral and used a syounger to get into the hard to reach bits, washed off with two salt water baths and he is back in. All the other corals seem fine and he has now closed more.... the water parameters are fine, mg slightly low but I have increased this today. ANy suggestions. I hav posted a picture sorry about the bubbles.

Sharkbait19 · Nov 23, 2021

Just give it some time. Gsp and the relatives (like knopia) will close for days after stress. I dragged my gsp up last Thursday and it still hasn’t fully opened back up. I think mine went for 2 weeks once. This is a really hardy coral, it will be fine.

luceym · Nov 23, 2021

Sharkbait19 said:
Just give it some time. Gsp and the relatives (like knopia) will close for days after stress. I dragged my gsp up last Thursday and it still hasn’t fully opened back up. I think mine went for 2 weeks once. This is a really hardy coral, it will be fine.

Does it look healthy enough in the picture?

Sharkbait19 · Nov 23, 2021

luceym said:
Does it look healthy enough in the picture?

Pics a little fuzzy, but I already see it opening back up. That’s a good sign!

muzikalmatt · Nov 23, 2021

Given that some of the polyps are out in your photo, that's definitely a good sign. The base/matting does look a little whiteish though (typically GSP has purple matting). Do you know if the new light is much more powerful than the previous one? You can overlight your corals, but GSP is typically pretty hardy.

As Sharkbait mentioned, GSP can close up sometimes especially after dipping or changes in its environment so I wouldn't worry about it too much. Just give it some time and it should adjust to your tank and open up. If you're still having issues in a week, maybe try dialing back the new light a bit if you have the ability to.

X-37B · Nov 23, 2021

Give it some time like others have said.
Also keep an eye on it. When its doing good it can quickly expand to cover quite a bit of your system in no time.

MaxTremors · Nov 23, 2021

Pretty sure that is GSP and not knopia, but they have similar care requirements. GSP, knopia, clove polyps, etc can take days or even weeks to adjust to any changes or being moved. Just make sure to keep the mat (the purple part) clean and don’t allow algae to grow on it while the polyps are closed. You can blow it off with a turkey baster or ensure that it’s got decent flow (GSP likes fairly high flow). Just give it time.

Just as a general rule, when looking for help with corals, you should always list your parameters, saying they’re ‘good’ or ‘fine’ doesn’t tell us anything, and often times we miss or maybe don’t see something in our own parameters that a second (or third or fourth) set of eyes might see. But, I’m pretty confident your coral is just reacting to being dipped, moved, and new lighting.

Also, dipping after the coral has already been in your tank for more than a few hours is pointless, any potential pests or hitchhikers that were on it are already in your tank. In this case, taking it out to dip it likely did more harm than good (by ‘harm’ I don’t mean that you harmed anything severely or permanently, just that you likely prolonged the amount of time it will take the coral to get comfortable again).