When a coral grows too big?

[Phormium]

What do people do when a coral gets too big? I have a beautiful green Montipora with an unusual sculpted form that started out the size of a big potato chip and is now about 18” across and tall. It’s gorgeous and I love it, but it creates a huge blob of shade that has taken over 50% of my 120gal tank, so I also kinda hate it. Plus it doesn’t seem impressive in side view as you see almost none of its colour or shape.

Any suggestions on what to do?
Try and get rid of it in one piece? It’s not attached to any of my other rock structure as it’s growing on its own small rock that I’ve wedged among some other rocks. It could likely be easily removed, but it’s so fragile how would it be transported? Would someone even want to buy it or trade?
I break off palm-sized chunks from time to time and trade them in or give them away but that’s my full extent of fragging experience and I don’t really have any interest in that.
Or should I break it off its base and try to lower it? Although shade would still be an issue, I’d at least get to see the top surface.
What else could I do? The tank has been in stalemate for a long time as I’m kinda frozen unable to decide what to do. I thought this Forum may provide some better input—suggestions appreciated. Photos attached, pic doesn’t do justice to how much shade there is.

[Dearth]

I am by no means an expert with sps and hard coral but my understanding is you can break off individual leaves which will in turn grow out themselves.

[Ken]

Hi there, that is a beautiful piece. I had the same problem many, many years ago with the same Montipora similiar to yours, the only way to enjoy mine was to look down from the top, as all the sides had no color and were shaded. What I should have done was back then slowly trim as needed, instead of letting it go. Then I eventually lowered the colony down to the bottom. Fast forward now, I learn from the past and as some corals are fast grower we need to trim them ever so often. I have broken off pieces and tried to give them away but not many reefer are interested in this fast growing coral. It would be ashame to get rid of it, I would trim it and lower it down to the bottom, yeah it takes up a lot of space, but if you trim right it should look good and then stay on top of it, by the looks of the rest of your corals, you have an mazing beautiful reef. Happy reefing regards Ken

[smokinreefer]

That's a tough one. I love a tank with big grown-out colonies.

It's tough to hack up a grown-out colony like that and have it look like its former self.

Personally, I'd either cut it back to about 1/4 size and let it regrow, or trim it a bit and mount a bunch of sun corals below it. It would look great in your setup.

[Reef_kid]

Hey, I love breaking down big corals!
Awesome post, Just remove the under "petals"as large sheets. take it to the local reef shop. I am sure you can get a couple hundred dollars in store credits for some new coral to replace . just kept the crown or a singe portion. that way you don't have to really frag it and sell it out individually. You can get ride of it in "wholesale". Call around to the shops.

[Phormium]

Thanks to all above and the PM’s I received. It’s done and now I wonder what I was hesitating for. It looks so much better now. It was impossible to lift out, so I had to do the pruning while it was inside the tank—good time to have at least 3 hands!
I pruned at least half of the overall volume and chipped off the dead “stem”. It’s now lower by almost a foot and looks really good as I can finally see it from above.
Thanks again for the instructions and advice, the scale of it is so much better and now I can confidently prune in the future.
This forum can be real valuable as a resource!

[msjboy]

I saw a guy with a silmilar sized green monti..maybe even bigger under my lights…nothing else in tank as he was getting rid of it. Not sure what happened to,it but he was going away all the pieces that had broken off. If I recall, it was even denser in the number of petals. Tank was a big plexiglass one probably at least 150 gallons.

[Ken]

Thanks for the update, sure would be nice to see what it looks like now, dropping it a foot down is quite significant. Cheers from Ken