Starting off a salt water aquarium help!!

[whatcaneyedo]

The size of tank absolutely matters, larger systems are more stable and can accommodate more livestock but obviously cost more.

One month would be an alright amount of time to allow a new system to cycle with some live rock before adding fish. However in some conditions it could be done sooner or even later.

I'm not going to suggest any good starter fish. One might recommend damsels as hardy inexpensive fish to start off a tank with... but if you have no desire to keep damsels that would be a stupid recommendation. The better question to ask yourself is what fish do you want to keep?

Minimally I probably spend 2 hours a week maintaining and caring for my system which is relatively large and highly automated.

Select the species of fish and coral that you want to keep and build a system suitable to accommodate them. Buy good quality equipment and you'll save money in the long term. Read a book or a lot of internet articles from reputable sources. Model your system after others who are successful at keeping what you want to keep.