I guess what I'm asking is which would be more beneficial. I have just one chamber available. I do have live rock & sand so I think you just answered my question, thank you!
I had the IM 50 AIO for about a year. No skimmer, but I did run a refugium in one of the back chambers. I had to get a little inventive but it worked well (you can find a link to that build thread in the first post of my current build thread).
I decided not to go with a skimmer in that tank because all I read about was how hard it was to find a good/effective nano-skimmer. Most everything I read said with small (nano) tanks like that it's really rare that a good WC schedule isn't enough to handle whatever bioload you put in there.
Obviously DYOR. I'm decently new so my info mostly comes from reading