When I first started keeping coral it was mostly softies like mushrooms leathers green star polyps and I had a frogspawn. I kept them in a 29 gallon with a fluval hang on filter. I never tested anything besides salinity, just did water changes when the water looked dirty. I kept saltwater fish only for years prior to trying a reef. When I upgraded tanks and decided to get serious about sps I did a ton of research and bought some test kits. Hanna checkers for alk and po4 and salifert for no3, ca, and mg.
The biggest mistake I made was not understanding that having some nutrients are important to keeping healthy coral. It seemed everything I read told how to get rid of nitrate and phosphate. So at the first sign of algae I bought some gfo and next thing I know my acros started melting and all my other corals started closing up. That led me down a long road of dinoflagellates and chrysophytes and zero coral growth and a bunch of coral death. So with all that said I would recommend feeding your fish more to bring those nutrients up. You may even want to run your skimmer only half the time until those nitrates are above zero. Definitely get some test kits especially alk. Sounds like you're on the right track.
