Should I go with Protein Skimmer or Refugium?

[Gungo]

Guys,

Thank you very much for all your comments and support.

If I am going to do both I will need to modify my sump and remove the ATO and use that space to have skimmer section and fuge section, and I'm not on that mood. But in my experience, having both will disappear nutrients from the tank (past experiences). That's why I didn't want to go with both. I find it like running in circles having a skimmer and fuge efficient enough to make you dose nutrients to the tank to have some available for other inhabitants...

Sometimes I feel that hobbyists instead of having sumps maintaining their tanks, they have tanks maintaining their sumps just because they're ridiculous efficient.

In case I go with skimmer, i have 7" x 12" space. I have a SCA 301 but I hate this skimmer because its just too much microbubbles. Was thinking of bubble magus curve 5, Aquamaxx FC-80 or something like that. I was also considering the NAC 3.5 from bubble magus.

The worst part of deciding this is that whichever way I choose, I will regret not going the other

 

[Breadman03]

Sometimes I feel that hobbyists instead of having sumps maintaining their tanks, they have tanks maintaining their sumps just because they're ridiculous efficient.

That's actually a pretty good way to look at it, even if it's pretty funny. If we are trying to create a balanced ecosystem, we should probably give strong consideration to whether our expected bioload will be well matched to our filtration.