UK Newbie here, am I choosing the right equipment? Help!

Welcome to the salt life, and congrats on doing your research. What I'm going to highly suggest is a protein skimmer - it will benefit your tank and keep it very clean. They typically act as the "filter," so I don't usually run external or hob filters of any sort on a salt setup. Otherwise your list is good, I'd suggest getting more rock though for a reason; once your tank is setup and established you don't want to add more rock, because that would redo the whole cycle (should be about a month or more) because you introduce dead crap on the rock into your tank. Also I'd get a whole kit for testing parameters, like nitrate nitrite and ammonia. And I'd suggest having a powerhead along with your wave maker to get more water circulation.

Nice to hear things are coming together. First off, I find skimmers as a necessity, because of their ability to pull all that gunk from a tank (you'd be surprised - just google image some of the stuff that comes out). Despite that, many don't jump to the same conclusions, and the major problem is negated by more frequent water changes and more live rock.

Usually we measure rock in pounds over in Canada (1kg=2.2lb) so usually it is 1lb of rock per u.s. gallon of water (do you British use gallons too? liters?) although just but enough to make your tank look nice, I personally like a more open aquascape, instead of cluttered hills of rock. And the entire "lab kit" probably the master kit, and yeah its fine for normal use, lots of people have it, but yeah measuring is exciting!... until you do it thousands of times. But eh like the enthusiasm.

And salt, buy as much as you can carry, I (and lots) buy in bulk because you can keep it for a long time, just buy whichever is cheapest or best for you. Or if you would like, buy smaller packets, buy I usually just get a couple of those salt barrels.

Anyways hope your shopping goes well, come back for more questions if needed. btw just a heads up your cycling process of your tank will last 1 month (min) so you'll have to suppress your wanting to buy fish for a little while.

I don't keep marine but I'm sure you'll get loads of help on em, Eheim FX5 canisters are great as far as the filter goes.

Also people like to help newbies on here, especially those who do their proper research, as far as I've seen.

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