Goniopora: The Flowerpot Coral, Conditioned — Care and Colonies for Sale

Goniopora carries the worst old reputation in the hobby and deserves it least. The flowerpot coral — a dome of long, swaying polyps, each ending in a little daisy of tentacles — used to die by the thousands as wild imports that arrived starving. The animal was never the problem. The supply chain was.

Contrary to popular belief, goniopora is easy — when it is conditioned. Ours have grown for years in our Key West systems, and colonies are held and observed here before they are listed. A goni that is already eating and growing in captivity is a different purchase from one that came off a plane last week, and that difference is most of the genus’s bad name.

Care at a glance

One ID note: goniopora polyps carry around 24 tentacles; its close cousin Alveopora carries 12. We stock both — alveopora is here — and everything on this page applies to both.

The commitment is food. Gonis are heavy feeders of fine suspended plankton, and steady fine feeding plus stable water is the entire recipe — stability matters more than exact numbers. The technique is the same one that works for acans: spot feeding, done properly.

Goniopora in stock now

Conditioned, eating, and photographed individually — the photo is the exact colony that ships.

One thing to know before you order: shipping and packing are charged by the box, not by the coral. A box holds several corals for the same $15 packing fee and the same overnight ride, Florida orders under 6 lb ship overnight for a flat $30, and orders over $399 ship free. If this page puts one coral on your list, it is worth seeing what else belongs in the box — start with corals under $100 or the newest WYSIWYG pieces.

Every stony coral we sell is aquacultured at the shop in Key West under Florida Aquaculture Certificate #AQ0254072, and the photo on a WYSIWYG listing is the exact animal that ships. Corals ship UPS Overnight every Tuesday and Wednesday. If you are ever in Key West, come see the raceways.