Fire and Ice Favia

Fire and Ice Favia is offered under the aquarium-trade name shown in the product title.

The Favia/Favites label is retained as a familiar trade descriptor; it should not be treated as a verified species identification. Colony color and contrast can vary with spectrum, intensity, nutrients, and photography.

Care Guide

• Lighting: Low to medium — PAR 50–150.
• Flow: Low to moderate.
• Placement: Lower-to-middle rockwork with gentle, indirect flow and space from neighboring corals.
• Aggression: Allow several inches of clearance. Brain corals can damage neighbors through nighttime feeding filaments or sweeper activity.
• Feeding: Offer small meaty foods two or three times weekly if the coral accepts them; remove uneaten food.

Keep salinity, temperature, alkalinity, calcium, and magnesium stable. Change light or flow gradually and watch tissue inflation and feeding response.

Shipping: Ships UPS Next Day Air from Key West. Current eligibility and delivery timing are shown at checkout.

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.