Sounds like you are going about it quite level headedly.....good for you!
Regards dosing, I found that when I began managing my Calcium, Alkalinity, and Magnesium levels in my FOWLR, my Regal Tang stopped experiencing the short bursts of light ich he would occasionally get. These are the three additives that reefers manage most closely, as most other trace elements are really secondary and easily managed through water changes.
If you are planning on doing huge, frequent water changes, than perhaps dosing will not be very productive, but for the average maintenance routine doing two/three part dosing will go a long way to creating a more stable environment, and it is very easy to do. Starting out, I simply measure a baseline, go for a week (8 days technically) without dosing, measure the decrease, and then calculate what the volume would be for dosing every other day (alternating Calcium one day, Alkalinity the next). Of course you have to also figure out what your effective tank volume is by seeing what increase you get for a given volume of additive. Magnesium I tend to only touch up after water changes, since it tends to be consumed at a much slower rate.
With lighting, if you really have no photosynthetic animals in your aquarium, I would keep it to about 8 hours or less, or those hours when you are home to view the aquarium. Otherwise you are benefiting algae growth more than anything else. Regards algae management, I would highly recommend putting a phosban reactor or similar chamber (NextReef?) on with GFO (phosban remover) in order to keep phosphate and thus cyano and algae under control. Same thing with activated carbon in a pump fed chamber...
Feeding will depend on what you are keeping and how high a level of water quality you are trying to maintain (e.g. if you are keeping angels or butterflies you are going to want a much higher standard).
My 90g tank is but a few weeks old. My ammonia has just recently spiked and it looks like I am on my way. I have quite some time before I stock. My question is NOT stocking related. Got a 30g sump w/ a RO nwb 110 and a refugium. Just a FOWLR. Anything to do while I am waiting. I kept a 20 nano for quite awhile. But, I am asking experience from FOWLR folks.
Dosing...with what?
Light times...
Feeding...
Gonna stock appropriately...no triggers or tangs, large angels, none of em.
Maybe anthias, flame angel, goby & pistol....who knows.
