I'm with boB on this one.
A few years ago, we ran a Precision Marine HOT skimmer on our first two reefs for about 2-3 years. Produced great skimmate! But fiddling with it to remove micro bubbles, fiddling to get the skimmate not too wet or too dry, and coming home to at least two floods was just too much freaking work! Now that we live in a second storey condo, floods are a major no-no
I know we do exta work to compensate for the lack of skimmers on our three reefs, but we don't have any more floods and don't have to fiddle with extra machinery. IMO, our reefs look great.
Rory and countless others have seen our skimmerless reefs. Anyone care to comment on how our reefs are doing without skimmers?