Button polyps out of control!

[cuckoochews]

Now being 3+ years into the reef thing I find myself confronted w/ a whole new problem... Overgrowth! I guess this is a good sign of reefing success, but now I'm stumped. This pic was snapped back in september after removing the original chunk of rock that had roughly 10 button polyps on it... rsz_dsc07722.jpg
Since then, it continued to flourish and is now surrounding the mushroom, leather, and candy canes. The shrooms and leather seem fine w/ it , but the candy canes aren't diggin it! They aren't filling out like they were before. Everything there is now attached to the main lr structure so this leads me to my question... Do I just cut the button polyps out that are infringing on the candy canes territory or try the aptasia-x method? Which is more perminant to the buttons and least damaging to the environment?

[Cliff]

Yup, they can be very invasive.

I put a frag with 4 heads in my tank about 2 or3 months ago. It now has 11 heads. If you give them good water quality, they grow like weeds in your front lawn

Maybe you could frag and sell them. I’ve never had to remove them before, but I would try to peel them off the rocks before cutting them. Maybe run some carbon as well just in case they can release some toxins into the water

Hopefully someone who has actually fragged them before can share their experiences

[cuckoochews]

Thanks Cliff, I was thinking of that too, but never fragged before. Maybe pull a couple small boulders of lr out of the ruge and glue them on???