60 kidney stones a year!!!! oh man I’m so sorry for your wife! My wife has had 4-5 in the 15 years we’ve been together and I thought that was a lot for someone to go through.I have a 6 stage rodi filter, and I’ll manually add it for now. Bought it to filter water for my wife’s kidney stone issue as here they add a lot of calcium to the tap water, and it’s helped. She was getting about 60 a year and now we are down to about 2-3, but that’s another story haha.
As far as the water top off, you’re off to a good start. Sounds like you’ve got a plan but I’ll say it anyway. Having an automatic top off once you put coral in the tank will increase your chances for success substantially, unless you are religious about adding water constantly. Also, your water parameters look good enough for cycling the tank and I know someone mentioned it already but I’ll reiterate, you might want to consider bumping up the salinity to 1.026/35ppt. And your heat could go up a touch as well. 77-78. Leaving it 76 isn’t going to kill anything but coral will do better a couple degrees warmer.
As you mentioned, everyone has their way of doing things. Here’s one I use if you’re looking for a common method to cycle the tank. Im sure you’ve read about it. Put a chunk of frozen shrimp (or fish food as mentioned) in the tank with some bacteria boost. Which you’ve done the bacteria already. Test a few days later, write down the ammonia level. Test a few days later, write down ammonia level. Repeat... And then as soon as you show no ammonia test for nitrites and nitrates (though I don’t really see the need for a nitrite test kit. It starts as ammonia and ends as nitrate so there’s really very little need to know nitrite). Once you test 0 ammonia and can show a nitrate reading. Throw another chunk of shrimp or fish food in and test for ammonia and nitrates the next day. Once you’re there you’re pretty much cycled. Should take 2-4 weeks. Be careful not to get hung up on low ammonia readings not showing 0. I see people post all the time about their cycle getting stuck because their ammonia is at 0.5-1ppm. Ammonia test kits are finicky and sometimes won’t test at zero. That’s why it’s important to test along the way and to test for nitrates. Once you can prove that it goes from ammonia to nitrates. It’s cycling. How fast it can do that is why it’s important to wait before you add fish. Some people will add fish as soon as they see proof of the cycle and then they end up with an ammonia spike because the tank hasn’t matured enough. That’s why I say 2-4 weeks. 2 weeks it should be cycled and another 2 weeks to let it mature a bit.