It would be OK for a start just to see if you will stick to worm farming. If you take the bigger size and it's too big for the amount of worms that you have, you can always put a temporary partition using folded corr. cardboard and use the other side to start pre-rotting food and/or shredded paper storage. That's what I did when I started.

I would get 1 lb of worms to start.

As to bin size, the surface area is really more important than the depth. I would err on the side of a wider and shallower bin rather than a deep bin. I don't know what style of tote you are looking at, but I would get whatever size you can handle that isn't too deep in relation to its width and length.

Get two bins to put one inside the other - it helps to catch drainage and when they climb out early on.

You can put things like empty soda bottles or medicine bottles, anything to lift one bin up so it doesn't get airlocked.