Nowhere in your code is anything that does something with ledStrip; so I suspect that you have stripped too much from the original code; do you have a link for that original code?
I see you have some comments in your code asking for info.
I'm not familiar with APA102, so don't know if you can have multiple strips on different pins.
for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++)/// i dont know why 8
Your for-loop reads the 8 analog inputs of the 32U4. If nothing is connected to those pins, they float and give a bit of a variable number. That number is usually used to seed the random number generator but that part seems to have fallen away when you modified the code.
// whenever timer resets, clear the LED colors array (all off) do i need this??
for (int i = 0; i < LED_COUNT; i++)
Probably yes; you can try with and without once you have code that at least can light up some leds.
PS
code tags and clickable links in your first post; if I could give you two karmas, I would. You will have to do with just one, sorry.