How to Tell Favia is healthy?

[DevilDuck]

Any tips on favias?

 

This is my first favia. The day it arrived in the tank it had some a couple extended polyps as seen in the picture. For the past few days it has not extended them again. 

I've attempted to feed it some BeneReef and I've tried moving it to a lower flow area of the tank since I've read that the like moderate flow. 

 

How do I know the favia is healthy?

 

 

[FollyFish]

In the pic the favia looks healthy. They will puff up and at night will send out sweepers, so best to keep away from others. In the pic onenof the polyps show the short feeding tentacles. This is a good sign. If they are unhappy they won't puff up and the can look almost skeletal. They tend to like mod flow and lower light. So watch for bleaching. 

[DevilDuck]

Thank you for the tips! After the first day, I did not see the feeder polyps appearing for several days even with adding food to the water column and target feeding. Even at night. Then I saw a video on the plastic bottle top method. I tried it and finally I got a good feeding response!

 

 

[mcarroll]

On 1/20/2021 at 10:42 AM, DevilDuck said:

Any tips on favias?

 

This is my first favia. The day it arrived in the tank it had some a couple extended polyps as seen in the picture. For the past few days it has not extended them again. 

I've attempted to feed it some BeneReef and I've tried moving it to a lower flow area of the tank since I've read that the like moderate flow. 

 

How do I know the favia is healthy?

 

 

 

 

Looks great!  They may or may not extend tentacles depending on how they feel.  They ear if/when they are hungry...and if they don't need to feed, they may never extent tentacles.

 

On the rare occasion that mine extend tentacles it's at night.  But it's very rare IME.  Mine are definitely photosensitive about the "why"...even a flashlight is enough to make them retract.  

 

I think there are plenty of dissolved nutrients and detritus (which is a good thing) in most tanks so that proactive feeding isn't very required in most tanks.

[tviquez10]

Jumping on this post to see if this is a normal behavior for a newly introduced Favia. What appears to me to be the feeder tentacles, has been extended with mouths open since yesterday. It was introduced Monday. They're moving periodically as if they're "catching" something. Is it a normal behavior for them to leave their tentacles out during acclimation? My tank is a 20 gallon long and 4 months old. It was seeded with 10 pounds of live rock from my 8 year old 10g tank so I was thinking that it really might be feasting for an extended period.lol I have a pipe organ from a couple years ago that's fine, the GSP frag and birds nest I added are doing wonderful. The GSP and birds nest were added at the same time as the Favia. My nitrates and phos run a little elevated so could it just be having a hard time acclimating? I hope you can zoom in on the picture, that's as close as I could get. 

[jservedio]

2 hours ago, tviquez10 said:

Jumping on this post to see if this is a normal behavior for a newly introduced Favia. What appears to me to be the feeder tentacles, has been extended with mouths open since yesterday. It was introduced Monday. They're moving periodically as if they're "catching" something. Is it a normal behavior for them to leave their tentacles out during acclimation? My tank is a 20 gallon long and 4 months old. It was seeded with 10 pounds of live rock from my 8 year old 10g tank so I was thinking that it really might be feasting for an extended period.lol I have a pipe organ from a couple years ago that's fine, the GSP frag and birds nest I added are doing wonderful. The GSP and birds nest were added at the same time as the Favia. My nitrates and phos run a little elevated so could it just be having a hard time acclimating? I hope you can zoom in on the picture, that's as close as I could get. 

Not a favia! That's a micromussa lordhowensis that looks perfectly normal and healthy now, though looks like it was pretty rough at some point in the past. They love high nutrient levels, are very difficult to kill, and aren't aggressive at all. They don't throw out sweepers like favia do. They very frequently have their feeder tentacles out even during the day.

[tviquez10]

28 minutes ago, jservedio said:

Not a favia! That's a micromussa lordhowensis that looks perfectly normal and healthy now, though looks like it was pretty rough at some point in the past. They love high nutrient levels, are very difficult to kill, and aren't aggressive at all. They don't throw out sweepers like favia do. They very frequently have their feeder tentacles out even during the day.

Wow, thank you so much! Misinformation from my LFS...I even looked it up when I got home to make sure that's what it was and it definitely looks very similar. They may have not even realized it wasn't Favia. I really appreciate the info, this group is amazing!

[DISQUALIFIED-QQ]

Puffy. Tissues aren't tight to the skeleton. Sweepers are kinda hit and miss. It took me some months to finally see sweepers. I would recommend "medium" flow. I have put Favia in low flow to where mucus choked them out.

[jservedio]

2 hours ago, tviquez10 said:

Wow, thank you so much! Misinformation from my LFS...I even looked it up when I got home to make sure that's what it was and it definitely looks very similar. They may have not even realized it wasn't Favia. I really appreciate the info, this group is amazing!

Glad to help!

2 hours ago, DISQUALIFIED-QQ said:

Puffy. Tissues aren't tight to the skeleton. Sweepers are kinda hit and miss. It took me some months to finally see sweepers.

Both yes and no! While being totally deflated all the time is a surefire way of knowing they are not doing well or are being constantly irritated (deflated occasionally is totally fine and is a normal response to being touched by non-prey), favias tend not to really get all that puffy and being too puffy is a sign that it isn't getting enough light. Some LPS like lords make it super easy to tell when they are reaching for light, but it's much less obvious with a favia.

 

Sweepers aren't a sign of feeding but are a sign of aggression (feeding tentacles are totally different), so having sweepers out isn't really a good or bad sign. Sweepers are deployed when the coral chemically senses another coral nearby that it wants to either attack or defend itself against. While a very unhealthy coral may not be able to deploy sweepers that doesn't mean it's thriving by any means. Also, favia sweepers are absurdly powerful and can reach out to at least 6" in even smaller colonies, so they aren't really something you want to see in your nano!

[Jokin]

On 12/30/2021 at 12:23 AM, jservedio said:

Glad to help!

Both yes and no! While being totally deflated all the time is a surefire way of knowing they are not doing well or are being constantly irritated (deflated occasionally is totally fine and is a normal response to being touched by non-prey), favias tend not to really get all that puffy and being too puffy is a sign that it isn't getting enough light. Some LPS like lords make it super easy to tell when they are reaching for light, but it's much less obvious with a favia.

 

Sweepers aren't a sign of feeding but are a sign of aggression (feeding tentacles are totally different), so having sweepers out isn't really a good or bad sign. Sweepers are deployed when the coral chemically senses another coral nearby that it wants to either attack or defend itself against. While a very unhealthy coral may not be able to deploy sweepers that doesn't mean it's thriving by any means. Also, favia sweepers are absurdly powerful and can reach out to at least 6" in even smaller colonies, so they aren't really something you want to see in your nano!

im adding one on its own little island in the front corner of my tank

its close 2 6 inchest from a zoa and my BTA so i think its safe its an alian eye

[jservedio]

3 hours ago, Jokin said:

im adding one on its own little island in the front corner of my tank

its close 2 6 inchest from a zoa and my BTA so i think its safe its an alian eye

6" is plenty of room for years to come - most LPS, including favia, are pretty non-aggressive toward palys and zoas. I've had a colony of both palys and zoas directly touching my large favia colony for probably 4 or 5 years now and the only time any polyps get killed is as it's actively growing over them (and they grow relatively slow). IME they tend to be most aggressive toward other LPS, particularly other mussids. If they are within striking range of other LPS, you can pretty much guarantee if they have a way to attack they will eventually. Favia may seem very peaceful, for even years on end, and they'll make you wonder where they ever got their reputation...right up until they blow up everything around them out of the blue.

 

To give you an idea how fast they grow and how they do next to Zs and Ps, this colony grew from a frag that was a bit smaller than yours in 2014 and has been in this spot for at least 4 or 5 years and is a bit bigger than my fist.