Goniopora Damaged

MischiefReef · Mar 31, 2023

I noticed today that my tangs knocked off their seaweed clip this morning and it landed at the bottom of the tank. It was sitting amongst a group of my goni colonies and my tangs were still pecking away at it but I didn’t think too much of it. Not wanting to drop what I was doing and dunk my arm to fish it out right away, I figured I’d deal with it a little later but ended up setting myself up for a giant facepalm moment.
Of course I forgot about it for most of the day, fished it out in the evening. Didnt notice anything wrong at first. Then as I was doing some tank maintenance I noticed one of the goni colonies has had a few chunks taken out of it. At least 4 missing polyps, and another polyp is semi detached from the skeleton too.
I guess my tangs got a little over aggressive with the nori sheet/clip and the goni became collateral damage. I’ve seen the tangs shred the heads of my euphyllia coral before too when a nori sheet landed across the branches. But with euphyllia it can usually heal up. Not sure about this goni though. I’ve already done an iodine dip to hopefully ward off any infections. Here’s a pic after the dip, sorry for the poor quality image tank lights were off already.

Id greatly appreciate any insight, opinions and experience. Do gonis regrow flesh to cover up bare spots in the skeleton? I could frag it out I guess but it’s in a center part of the colony so I’d have to likely cut this down into two smaller colonies. Should I just leave it alone to heal? Follow up dips necessary?

blaxsun · Mar 31, 2023

The short answer is that yes, they can recover - it may just take a long time (many months). I have a similar situation with an alveopora that got badly stung by a torch a year ago and in the time since it's grown back maybe 50%.

MischiefReef · Mar 31, 2023

blaxsun said:
The short answer is that yes, they can recover - it may just take a long time (many months). I have a similar situation with an alveopora that got badly stung by a torch a year ago and in the time since it's grown back maybe 50%.

Awesome, thanks for your quick reply and sharing your experience! Any special care for it during the recovery process, or just leave it the heck alone?

Some update photos below with blue lights on now. Note: some of the polyps are retracted because I was trying to clear up a view of the damaged bits. With close assessment Id say that 3-4 polyps are completely gone. And at least all neighboring polyps are ticked off and semi closed or puffy looking in the wrong places. In the last pic you can see another colony grown from the same frag as this, healthy as usual. Since I’m 90% sure this is physical damage related is there any need to isolate the two colonies from each other? I know for bacterial issues the same clone colonies can be susceptible to the same strains of disease.
WWYD for this injured colony: leave it, dip it, quarantine it, frag it? #reefsquad

blaxsun · Mar 31, 2023

MischiefReef said:
Awesome, thanks for your quick reply and sharing your experience! Any special care for it during the recovery process, or just leave it the heck alone?

Some update photos below with blue lights on now. Note: some of the polyps are retracted because I was trying to clear up a view of the damaged bits. With close assessment Id say that 3-4 polyps are completely gone. And at least all neighboring polyps are ticked off and semi closed or puffy looking in the wrong places. In the last pic you can see another colony grown from the same frag as this, healthy as usual. Since I’m 90% sure this is physical damage related is there any need to isolate the two colonies from each other? I know for bacterial issues the same clone colonies can be susceptible to the same strains of disease.
WWYD for this injured colony: leave it, dip it, quarantine it, frag it? #reefsquad

Honestly, I would just leave it the heck alone. Whenever I've tried moving injured flowerpots I usually just end up making things worse. I had two that were almost completely retracted; one I left where it was and the other one I moved. Guess which one totally recovered and which one died in short order?

Christian0505 · Mar 31, 2023

In my experience it will heal with some time, just leave it alone.

i’ve had many corals and other stuff fall on my goniopora and alveopora, they always healed perfectly fine.
However, if you see STN on the corals which expands, immediately frag it and toss the infected part.

MischiefReef · Mar 31, 2023

Thanks for the advice and I think that’s the plan of action.
Although on a close inspection just now I noticed some small bugs/pods. Crawling in and out of the exposed skeleton part. I have previously seen this happen on euphyllia coral with BJD. Too small to capture on photo, I’ll try to attach a video but I know those usually don’t show.

I’m probably just freaking myself out but going to do one more dip just to put my mind at ease. From the photo though the neighboring polyps are coming back gradually.

CoralB · Mar 31, 2023

vetteguy53081 · Mar 31, 2023

MischiefReef said:
I noticed today that my tangs knocked off their seaweed clip this morning and it landed at the bottom of the tank. It was sitting amongst a group of my goni colonies and my tangs were still pecking away at it but I didn’t think too much of it. Not wanting to drop what I was doing and dunk my arm to fish it out right away, I figured I’d deal with it a little later but ended up setting myself up for a giant facepalm moment.
Of course I forgot about it for most of the day, fished it out in the evening. Didnt notice anything wrong at first. Then as I was doing some tank maintenance I noticed one of the goni colonies has had a few chunks taken out of it. At least 4 missing polyps, and another polyp is semi detached from the skeleton too.
I guess my tangs got a little over aggressive with the nori sheet/clip and the goni became collateral damage. I’ve seen the tangs shred the heads of my euphyllia coral before too when a nori sheet landed across the branches. But with euphyllia it can usually heal up. Not sure about this goni though. I’ve already done an iodine dip to hopefully ward off any infections. Here’s a pic after the dip, sorry for the poor quality image tank lights were off already.

Id greatly appreciate any insight, opinions and experience. Do gonis regrow flesh to cover up bare spots in the skeleton? I could frag it out I guess but it’s in a center part of the colony so I’d have to likely cut this down into two smaller colonies. Should I just leave it alone to heal? Follow up dips necessary?

Mine have had similar and fully recovered. Dip is done but was not necessary. Best you can do is add aminos and manganese to water ( Just a little daily for a week) which gives them energy in addition to light and promote cell production and of course feed 2x per week. Here is the one that a frag fell onto:

CoralB · Mar 31, 2023

vetteguy53081 said:
Mine have had similar and fully recovered. Dip is done but was not necessary. Best you can do is add aminos and manganese to water ( Just a little daily for a week) which gives them energy in addition to light and promote cell production and of course feed 2x per week. Here is the one that a frag fell onto:

MischiefReef · Mar 31, 2023

vetteguy53081 said:
Mine have had similar and fully recovered. Dip is done but was not necessary. Best you can do is add aminos and manganese to water ( Just a little daily for a week) which gives them energy in addition to light and promote cell production and of course feed 2x per week. Here is the one that a frag fell onto:

Awesome, thanks for sharing that info! Will definitely look into the amino acids and I believe I already got some manganese on hand. Makes me feel reassured that others have had successful recoveries with their gonis!

MischiefReef · Apr 5, 2023

Update for future reference, progression photos below.
The Goni has continued to gradually decline over the course of the last several days. It seems about 1 polyp per day is withering. Treatment so far has consisted of dipping on the 2 consecutive days after injury. Dips consisted of iodine (seachem reef dip) followed by revive X. All dips were done at maximum manufacture suggested strength and for the maximum suggested time. Coral was then allowed to recover for 3 days but continued to deteriorate.
I am moving on to a stronger treatment, started with a 15 minute dip of chemiclean, 1 scoop / liter(quart) of water, followed up by a 5 minute dip in hydrogen peroxide. I followed the dosing guidelines by Justin Credable (Grabel).
After initial dips the coral looks extremely upset, it is now back in the tank in an isolation box as I think being on the sand bed was irritating it further. More progress updates soon as I’ve observed how this round of treatment goes.

Injury discovered