Zoos crowded by button polyps?

Hello,
This rock was one of the great pieces that I got when OceanCrazy took down his tank. I love the zoos especially. They are very bright and colorful. It seems as though the button polyps or perhaps palythoas are overtaking the zoos. Should I cut some of them out?

Thanks for the help.

Those look like the teal paly's that have a reputation for overgrowing and causing issues. I have some of the same ones in my tank. I got rid of the main rock they were on, but they spread to my overflow cover.

I've tried picking them off, but they just slime up and I can't get a good enough grip on them to pull them off.

I love the rock and the zoos so I would like to find a solution. I think what will happen if I don't get it under control is it will kill the zoos.

Your best bet might be to split the rock to separate the palys from the zoas, and then pick off any remaining palys on the zoa rock.
If you end up with desirable zoas on the paly rock, cut them out too and put them on frag plugs.
Unless that rock has an acropora core, you be able to break it up with a chisel and hammer, or use a flat head screwdriver in place of a chisel.

Make sure to wear gloves, eye protection and mouth/nose protection when fragging zoas/palys.

I had problems with those exact same palys in my old 90. They grew out of control. You can use a small amount of Aiptasia X to kill individual polyps, but that's probably not a good idea to get rid of a bunch of them at once. I found that even if there was only one, they would multiply very quickly. You can try peeling them off the rock with a razor blade.

I have this same issue. They have wiped out a few Zoa coloys I've had. For now though They seem to be coexisting pretty well. I have noticed that with brighter light, the Palys don't extend as far and the Zoas continue to grow. They compete, but neither seems to get the advantage.

I have one colony of Palys that I wanted to get rid of so I tried a test. I buried the rock in the sand to see if it would kill them off. 5 or 6 heads out of a large colony survived and are still attached to the rock under the sand. If I do find that they are taking on one of my bigger Zoa colonys I will be removing them by force if needed!

What I think I will try is to take the rock out, of course all suited up in my hazmat gear, and snip them off as close to the rock as I can. I wonder if I put a dab of superglue on the areas I snip off if they would not come back.

I recently put the superglue on the wrong side of a piece of neon green toadstool leather and it has not come out.