TUG Fascination Favia (Aqua-Culture)

Description

TUG Fascination Favia (Aqua-Culture) is a Favia-type closed brain coral sold under an aquarium-trade name. The product title identifies this listing as aquacultured. These trade labels are useful to reef keepers, but they do not by themselves establish a modern genus or species, so this description keeps the customer-facing name without making a taxonomic guess.

Care Guide

• Light: Start at 50–100 PAR and acclimate slowly. Avoid placing a newly received coral directly under the brightest part of the fixture.
• Flow: Use low-to-moderate, varied indirect flow. The tissue should remain inflated without being folded against the skeleton.
• Placement: Place on secure lower rockwork with room for the colony to encrust and expand. Keep fleshy tissue clear of sharp edges and sediment.
• Feeding: Feeding is beneficial but not mandatory. Offer fine plankton or a small portion of meaty food 1–3 times weekly when feeding tentacles are visible.
• Spacing: Treat this coral as aggressive. Begin with 4–6 inches of clearance, inspect after dark, and move neighbors if sweepers reach beyond that space.

Maintain stable reef parameters and increase light or feeding only after the coral is expanding consistently. Sudden retraction is a reason to check flow, neighboring corals, salinity, and alkalinity before making several changes at once.

Shipping: Shipped from Key West by UPS Next Day Air livestock service. Inspect the coral on arrival and acclimate it gradually to your aquarium.

What to expect when it arrives

Brain corals arrive with tissue pulled tight against the skeleton and the corallite structure showing clearly. Float the sealed bag 15 minutes, drip acclimate 30 to 45 minutes, and place the coral low in moderate light and moderate flow. Tissue inflation returns over one to three days.

Placement, and the aggression nobody plans for

These are among the most aggressive corals in a mixed reef and almost nobody accounts for it when placing them. Favia, Favites, Platygyra and their relatives send out sweeper tentacles at night that reach several inches past the daytime footprint and will chemically burn whatever they touch. Judge spacing by what the coral does after lights out, not by how it looks at noon. Four to six inches of clear space in every direction is a sensible minimum.

Feeding and growth

Brains take small meaty food readily and thicken visibly for it. Feed two or three times a week after lights out when the feeder tentacles are already extended and the coral will take food without a fight. Growth is steady rather than fast — expect the colony to encrust outward across its base over months.

Common trouble

A bare patch or dark stripe spreading across the dome is usually mechanical damage from a neighbor rather than disease. Check sweeper range before treating for anything. Skeleton showing between corallites with no obvious cause generally means light that is too strong for where the coral sits.

Compatibility

Excellent for a beginner on husbandry, difficult for a beginner on placement. They will win almost any exchange, so the risk is to the neighbors rather than to the brain itself.