Doughnut Coral not doing so well

I purchased my first lps coral a couple weeks ago. It was very fleshed out and good looking. when i got it home i indroduced it to the tank with my usual care. it fleshed out right away and was loooking as good as it did at the store. the next day i awoke to find it had retracted into itself. The guy at the store told me to feed it. i fed it about a half a raw coctail shrimp which it ate and for the last 2 weeks it has been expelling the left overs but still has not fleshed out again. My tanks is about 3 months old. it is a 180 with a 40 sump. The diatom bloom is well over and the hermit crabs and snails have done a superb job of clean up. Ihave a little green now but not so much that it threatens to take over the tank. I tested the water again last night so the readings would be fresh for this post.

gravity = 1.018
KH= 12 drops or 214.8 (a bit high)
ph = 8.2
calcium = 320 down from last weeks test of 350 ( I added 5 teaspoons of seachem reef calcium after the test)
temp = 78
Amonia, nitrites, nitrates all at 0
Lighting is actinic for about 12 to 14 hours a day with MH on for about 4-5 hours a day.
I have a protien skimmer, aquaripure nitrate filter, a carbon and physical filter canister set, about 250lbs of live rock and I use ro/di water. I have purchased a few hundred rotifers and copepods for diversity and feeding and last night i added a cap full of seachem reef plus suppliment just for good measure. I have attached a photo.

Any ideas? I would hate to lose this guy. Thanks in advance.

 

Welcome to 3reef.

You specific gravity is way too low, shoot for 1.024-1.026. A sg of 1.018 will eventually kill stony corals.

Unfortunately that looks like a goner.

 

Welcome to 3reef, get your SG up as advised and keep you Ca above 380. hat is one rough looking coral, good luck with the recovery. I would cut the actinic light back to 10 hours per day also.

 

In the past i have found that running the gravity a bit low has helped with disease control. apparently that doesnt work for stony corals eh? i introduced a candy cane frag yesterday. so up it goes. thanks for the reply

 

No it does not. Do it slowly over the course of a couple of days.

 

ok i took 2 days and the sg is at 1.23 and the doughnut looks a little bit better. not much but a little. I'll get the gravity up a bit higher today. however the star polyps are looking a bit frazzled. their tentacles are curved like a plant that needs water. everything else seems ok. I'm kinda new at reef tanks so i have stuck so far with the easy soft corals. am i trying to keep the wrong types of corals together maybe? or do you think is this just a reaction to the change?

 

Nah, star poyps & a doughnut are fine together. You wont want them close though to be touching, but in a tank together is just fine. Changing the SG is gonna cause some coral stress. Its pretty much the same as changing air quality for us. You take someone from like say LA and let them breathe in some cold alaska air, or up to altitude in denver they are gonna feel different for a few days & will need to adjust. Same thing in this case. Star poylps especially are pretty resilient, give them some time to adjust.

 

Try 10 hours of light, and increase your gravity it should be around 1.020 to 1.024. Hope everything goes well. Good Luck!

 

Good advise here so far. When yousay coctail shrimp do you mean the cooked ones? You want to feed raw shrimp but some sort of pellet food would be a better idea then a piece of shrimp.

 

OK i'm getting really worried here. I have over three days brought the sg up to 1.024 and the calcium up to 420. I have a rock that is coverd with zoas of 4 different types. they haven't been opening at all and my mushrooms are only half open and most of my stars havent opened in a couple of days either. I moved the doughnut to the back of the tank under an overhang to provide some cover from the light. it's about the same. i thought it looked better but it kinda comes and goes. It's trying. I've resigned myself to the possibility of losing it but i would really hate to lose the other corals trying to save it. hopefully its just going to take time and all will return to normal. I have read that it is suggested that a person wait 6 months before adding coral. well i waited only 3. oops. Oh and no it wasnt cooked shrimp. It was raw. I peeled it myself. i am getting all kinds of different advice from local dealers. this was the advice i got from the dealer i bought it from. I take what i am told from many sources and determine what to believe as best i can. some give advice designed to keep you coming in and some are honestly trying to help. fish i'm pretty good on but corals im new at so i am forced to rely on others at least for a while until i get the hang of it. i jumped in with both feet and got overzealous i guess. thanks all for the help.