Agreed, its especially helpful for if some reason you can't do a water change in time, it'll help keep the ammonia down which is the most helpful thing IMO.Trust me, you'll want a skimmer. I didn't have one for a few months and then my whole tanked crashed! Got one after that.
As for the live/dead rock debate, it's 6 on one hand, 1/2 dozen on the other: You don't need live rock if you have enough bio filtration. The live rock essentially serves as a bio filter in the tank, plus, it grows the pretty purple and red coralline algae, but if you don't care about that, you can just increase your bio filtration and use dead rock - would be a lot cheaper - but the saving would probably be eaten up having to clean/change the bio filtration. Remember, you have to be a lot more strict with your tank maintenance with a SW tank compared to FW. Lag on water changes/maintenance with a SW tank and thing can go south in a hurry!
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