Hello.............and yes I have ?s

um, I don't know much about planted tanks, or lighting them, i do know, that cichlids, and plants, are not generally a good mix. Most of my cichlids, dig, and relocate everything, so its kinda a waste of money to do planted with them. you could however do a really nice planted, and have maybe some angels, or rams, both, would be a nice addition, with other specie of fish!

I have heard that de ionized water is good for a planted tank. As far as the lights, 2-3 watts per gallon is usually good. Only some cichlids will be able to resist munching on your plants: Angelfish, Discus, Rams. A few individual Sevrums are ok, but you cant tell until they start growing up. I had an electric blue jack dempsy with my Discus once and he was fine...probably dangerous in retrospect though. The main thing is that the larger cichlids will move the gravel around and uproot the plants. but if you start with inexpensive fast growing plants, like water sprite, you can do some experimenting.

Planted tanks rarely need as much light as coral tanks so switch to the 150w MH lamps instead of the 250w, drop the actinic lights.

I like canister filters. For a setup that large, 2 canisters rated for 100g tanks would be ideal.

A plant substrate would help, for a tank that large I recommend going with Soilmaster Select, a soil conditioner used on sports fields. The distributor is www.lesco.com.

You have lights and CO2 covered, you now need to consider fertilizers. www.rexgrigg.com covers the how to behind ferts and you can also buy from him.

Tap water is fine for planted tanks.

As others have stated, many cichlids are diggers and like to do their own aquascaping. However, I have seen some lovely planted tanks with mbuna cichlids so it is possible. You'd probably have to start the tank heavily planted and established before introducing the fish, so the plants can develop a heavy root system first.

Oh and Judge...treat John well, he is a friend from my local reef club. She is great John, and she keeps a reef as well.

The tank looks mighty deep, so if you switch to the 150 MHs, I would keep the 250's around just in case the low lying high light plants have a problem, if you planning on doing any ground cover plants.
Also aquascaping a bow front, or really anything not retangular/cubed, can be difficult to get the right look. I personally might go for an island look, with a barrier of sand around the edges, but I'm sure others can give some other ideas.

John, hows the yank progressing?