Congrats and welcome to the SW world. I've never really found any huge problems keeping SW water parameters. I have a harder time in FW. Although that pesky problem of having water of an extremely low pH and hardness doesn't help. Takes 4X the amount of marine buffer to get it up to 8.2, and then I get an alkalinity of 5.0 mg/L. I think i might try some water from outside my door, although I don't trust it with the nearby canal and lots of runoff from the boats, might need to head a bit out of the bay and snatch it.
do you plan on buying your LR online or locally? if you decide to go locally, I would recommend either Aquatouch or About the Reef...though I haven't been to ATR, it's supposed to be the best we have