Can you help? This tree is in need of help or input. Everything about is is just confusing. The picture is below.

Thanks,

Gardener Guy

You have the start of a very nice clump planting. The issues you need to correct are:
* The planting probably has too many trees. You can pick a front, based on the roots, and remove some of the trees now, or wait until you cut back hard next summer - see next item. When you start thinning, select the trees you really want to keep first & mark them. Then, remove first the trees that cross those trunk lines. Then remove other trees that you feel don't enhance the composition. Group plantings should have 2,3,5, or 7 trees. In plantings with more than 7 trees, it doesn't matter if the number is odd or even because your eye cannot discern odd/even without counting when there are more than 7 trees.
* The trees are much too tall, but now is a bad time to do any serious pruning. They'll need the energy their already sparse foliage will give them to get through the winter. I would let the planting grow wild until late June or early Jul, getting the trees outdoors & acclimated to full sun next spring/summer as soon as night temps are reliably above 55*, or move them in and out as temps allow. The object of cutting them back hard is to force back-budding from the trunks so you can chop them back to induce taper - training the new shoots into the new leaders.
* You haven't been pinching the tree. In summer, whenever a branch reaches 4-5 leaves, pinch it back to 2 leaves to encourage ramification and smaller leaves. Ficus leaves get progressively larger (when mature) as the branch extends. Don't forget to frequently rotate the pot on the growing bench so all sides get ample light.
* Treat the clump as a single tree. After you determine how many trees you want in the clump, forget it has multiple trunks & wire/pinch/prune accordingly.

That's about it.

Al

(as you develop the canopy you can also 'fake' the arial roots once you have a place to hide the trees added to make them -- no one will ever know if it's done right)

For now you need to begin to cinch it together then allow one leader from each tree to just grow vertical, this will fatten the trunks over time as well as the surface roots.

Bob