I'm a fan of the bakpak skimmers but for a tank that small. Weekly wc's are sufficient enough. All my salt tanks are skimmerless and my biggest is 55g.
Ps. I'm assuming you were asking about my old avatar which was actually an armatus. It looked huge in the pic but is only about a foot and its in a 150 with another one and a bunch of bichirs.
thanks for your reply Aw3s0m3. you must go through alot of salt that way. i kinda had my heart set on a skimmer. my last reef tank was a 50 breeder with a homemade sump. i only had a skimmer (a very large Emperor Aquatics) and live rock with many circulator pumps for filtration. sometimes i'd throw a bag of "Chemi-pure" in the sump, under the skimmer discharge. my point is, i like the gadgets, and it's inevidible that a skimmer is gonna end up on the nano tank. i'd love to drill holes in the floor, and put the 45-50 gallon sump with skimmer down in the basement for the 5 gallon reef, but she won't let me.
about my old reef tank, i broke it down years ago when i moved somewhere temporarily. temporarily turned into 4 years, and now i'm in my "permanent spot", but we want to install floors when we can afford it. after that, the 50 breeder with sump will be set up. for now i'm gonna do a nano, for 2 reasons. one reason is i love those little tiny fish and shrimp. the other is, since it's gonna be a 5 gallon, it can be moved when i do the floor. the 50 will end up being all fish. i'm thinking it'll be Africans this time.
PS- the avatar, i thought it was some type of snakehead, because above the pic it says, Cobra Snakehead". but now i know that's the title the site gives you for the amount of posts.