yeah the color change is just stress, some fish look pretty bad when they get stressed, like fox face, they look horrible when they get stressed
and i never drip acclimate hardly anything, i just put a small squirt from a turkey baster into the bag about every 10 min, been doing it this way for a long time for fish and corals and never a single issue, i can say i dripped my fromia star because they are a little more delicate