Looking for pointers

[WarDog]

Your lighting, flow, and w/c schedule seem fine. We can worry about those later.

What salt are you using? Are you using RODI?

Deep sand bed is so 2001. I'd lose that.

API kit is fine for ammonia, but I would replace the following; Salifert for Alk, Calcium, Magnesium, Nitrate, and Phosphate. Down the road, get a Hanna Phosphorus checker for more accurate reading. 1 - 2.5 is awful for po4. Don't worry about pH, that will take care of itself.... and throw the Nitrite kit in the trash.

SPS are very demanding and require stability, stability, and more stability.

Also get a good refractometer ($70) and mix your next w/c at 1.025. You should see better parameters.

Some people might argue the point, but Alk at 11 is way too high for my liking. I would aim for 8ish.

[Myka]

I agree with everything Warren said. You need to use better quality test kits to make sure you're getting reasonably accurate numbers. Without those numbers it's tough to say what you need to do.

Looking at your tank, it is not ready for SPS. You have too many soft corals in your tank which are chemically aggressive, and will not get along with SPS. These are the leathers on the right side, the brown/green polyps that look like they're everywhere, and the Xenia too. SPS need very clean water, and extremely stable parameters. For example, that phosphate needs to be under 0.1 ppm before you will have much luck. Some of the tougher SPS may be able tolerate higher phosphate (there are lot of examples online), but people won't tell you how many they killed before they found the ones that could tolerate it.

It all depends what you want out of your tank. Which direction do you want to go? Soft corals are the easiest corals to keep and generally do ok in most tank parameters. LPS hard corals such as Frogspawn, Hammers, Brains, Candy Cane, etc are fairly easy too, but need you to pay attention to calcium and alkalinity for best success. The more finicky ones will have less tolerance for nitrate and phosphate. SPS are the end of the line, they are the most challenging corals to keep.

One last thing, those polyps in your tank appear as though they may be the type that are typically associated with Palytoxin poisoning which can be VERY serious. If you provide a better photo of the polyps (try using a flash and put your camera/phone right up to the glass) I could confirm if they are that type or not. Of all the Palys, the ones that contain Palytoxin all look very similar to each other. Of those, some will contain no Palytoxin, and some will contain a lot. There is no way for a person to safely find out other than laboratory testing (which is expensive).