I have to admit I do not test water unless I sense something is wrong nowadays. Maybe is the experience from sitting in front of my tank for hours daily over the years, I can tell when the LS is not happy.
I used to do all the things in the book down to the dots and I have realised when I became too obsessive with all the numbers from water test, I became a slave to the tank.
For my current tank, I emphasis on the scaping to start off with. I want an open tank for easier maintenance, especially the sandy bottom. Next will be the shape of the SPS.Branching or table top type. All SPS keeper will tell you the bottom part of the tank will gradually die off because of the random growth of SPS blocking lights to the lower half of the tank . I try to avoid that with this tank.
For the SPS, I just look for healthy growth. Colouring come as bonus. I also refrained myself from adding too many species into the tank ( easy when money is not enough )
I change 120L water weekly without fail. 100% RO water . No fancy salt. Just Instant Ocean. I do vacuum clean my sand during every WC. I dose 1.5ml vodka once in the morning and once in the evening. From the SPS colour, I think my tank is not in the Ultra Low nutrient stage. But i think the NO3 is in the manageable level.
This is the tank I am most satisfy with up till now. ……….I have to confess I get my inspiration from Oregon Reef. The part where I failed to achieve is the multicolour RF colonies. I used to have multicolours RF but for some reason they wouldn't stick to any LR whatever I did. Only the orange colour stick !
BTW, how do you tell whether the LPS is hungry or not?