Monti overgrowing neighbors in established reef

[Dj City]

I have a 180 SPS dominate reef that's doing pretty good but I want to do better.
I have 2x Neptune Dos. One is dosing B-ionic for Cal and Alk. The other is dosing Easyreefs EasySPS and EasyBooster.
I got a new dosing pump.
I got the jeabo wifi 3.4 dosing pump so I can dose Red Sea Trace Colors.
I wanted to try their coral color regiment to see if I can get the most color out of my corals.
I'm good with light. I'm good with food, I'm good with nutrients, I'm good with parameters so I think the only thing I might be missing is trace elements. I know my iodine runs low and the Red Sea Trace Colors should address that and any other trace elements I may be missing or low in.

I have another problem though...

The Monti is starting to overgrow its neighbors.
How do I address this?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Mikedawg]

Yep, that's how monti's compete for space. Since you may not be able to remove one entirely, I would break off the encroaching part and call it fragging.

Good colors, btw.

 

[brandon429]

These are the problems reef aquarists love to have, I’ve been following your tanks build and grow out details and it always looks top notch

not sure how to cease the takeover my way is always a form of rock removal and external surgery - excising off what you don’t want. There may be better ways. Get a laser, wear glasses, lock it in a gun cabinet when not in use so nobody gets blinded, and burn the edges of the coral from outside the tank is second guess

 

[Dkmoo]

This is what I do - been using this method to frag in tank many encrusting colonies like montis and psammys

Take some epoxy make it into a thin layer and just cover the border where the encrusting coral is. Dont use any crazy glue. It will kill what it covers, but give it some time and it will reencrust over the epoxy. Once it encrusts over, take a screw driver and pop the epoxy off which will frag the coral. Then you can glue the the epoxy with coral frag into a frag plug