A good first tip, honestly, is to go for a bigger tank. Stability of the ecosystem will be a little tough in a 10G tank - not a lot of water volume to work with. I'd recommend aiming for a 29G (minimum). 55G or 75G is a better start.
Live rock is a must, as well as a protein skimmer. For live rock, I'd ignore the recommendations of many books, sites, etc, and buy about 1 lb per gallon of the tank. A lot of sites will say 1.5-2 lbs, but I think that is not really required, especially when starting out.
For the bottom of the tank, I would go for anywhere between 1-3 inches of the
finest grain aragonite sand you can find. I recommend a sand packaged by Seachem, in the line "Tidal Marine Substrates", named "Meridian Oolitic". More about it can be found
herer.
For a
protein skimmer, which you should consider a required element of filtration, I would recommend either a Coralife Super Skimmer or a AquaC Remora. The Remora is a better skimmer, but costs more. The Coralife is not a bad entry level model.
You need to create a big pile of
water flow, which can be done in many ways. The best options are either diffused flow powerheads (SEIO or Tunze Stream) or a Closed Loop (CL) & Closed Loop Manifold (CLM). Do some searches on the latter for more information.
Anyhow, as far as quantity is concerned, I would suggest 20 times GPH flow in the tank. For instance, for a 30G tank, that would be 600GPH of flow. Up to 30-40x is very reasonable as well. For a small tank, like a 29G tank, a SEIO powerhead or 2 would be great.
T5 HO or PC (Power Compact, Compact Flourescent) are spot on recommendations. Also, note that to start you'll probably want to aim for keeping Mushrooms, Softies & LPS corals, etc. These are (generally speaking) the most resilient classes of corals and will be easiest to keep, from a newbies perspective.
Lastly, for now, a couple general recommendations.
1. Research everything before a purchase is made. Don't go into stores and allow a salesperson, yourself, your girlfriend, etc, to talk you into buying something. This will save you money and frustration. And this goes for equipment, drygoods, and livestock. You can run things by us all in the club forum as a good measuring stick on the reasonability of an idea.
2. Buy some books. While the web & store owners can be valuable resources, some good books will be your absolutely best bet. Ask here and someone will recommend a good book. If you join the club, which is a good idea, you can check out excellent books from the club library.
3. Take your time. As I state below in my signature, only bad things happen fast in this hobby.
4. Be responsible. We are caretakers of the critters that we put in our tanks. We have a responsibility to each animal, large or small. This is both a moral obligation as well as a smart way to avoid regulations from encroaching into our hobby to much in the US, as has happened elsewhere.
5. Know first and foremost that like many hobbies, etc, there are a million opinions, facts, etc, and they often disagree with each other. Try not to resolve them all at first. You won't be able to. Rather, do your homework. Pick a method of setting up & running your tank, and then go from there. You can always make changes, etc, if you change your mind on something. And as I keep learning, there will always be the next tank, either sooner or later.
That's all I can think of for the moment. Have fun!!!
