hi, good luck with your tank. I've had mine for a week now. I replaced the black foam filter with a bag of crushed coral. This should make a better bio filter as the coarse foam is not very useful as there's barely any bio load.
I have approx one inch of sand, and i have one fist-size rock with some nice mushrooms on it. Otherwise I didnt add anything yet, intend to cycle it for 2 weeks. As I have the tank in the office, I dont use a cooling fan, and found that even without aircon overnight, the water temp is still pretty ok. For topping up, I use ice cubes made with distilled water. The evaporation in aircon office isnt bad, just asked our cleaner to top up once when she comes in on Sundays to make sure it stays under control. Think a few shrimp are nice, but one tip, make sure your corals are glued to the rock as they will displace the corals otherwise. And with the high water level, you cant really stick your hand in there to put it back, so thats a worthwhile effort. ;-)