Fluval surface skimmer

[mike31154]

If you're referring to the small apparatus with the little floating transparent cup in the tube, I used one of these with a Remora C skimmer a few years ago. Depending on how much water the pump in your canister pulls, you'll need to tune the surface skimmer to take water both from the top & the lower intake to avoid overpowering the floating cup thing. It's a great way to capture some of the oily stuff that accumulates on the surface of the water & have your skimmer or canister take care of it. As far as the 'nitrate factory', well if you have live rock in your system, you likely have a nitrate factory. A canister filter can be a better one than your live rock, which means you're breaking down the really harmful stuff like nitrites, which is a good thing. You simply need to find a way to remove the nitrates, which a skimmer, water changes and/or a skimmer will help do for you.