Hope the eurobracing works out, you seem pretty handy, probably easier to do it yourself
All my rock is lr, the base rock was live, plus I just added more lr to my sump this week, only one batch of rocks was dry but was in someone elses sump, which is why I figured the skimmer should be doing something...probably need to pull it apart to make sure everything is connected and didn't pull loose when we set it up.