Sorry to disagree with Larry, but i would definitely use your skimmer during the cycling period, especially if you're using fresh, uncured liverock. The thing you want to do here is avoid, not create, a huge ammonia spike; this spike will kill much of the life on your rock. Believe me, your tank will still "cycle" just fine and you'll have a good innoculation of bacteria in the rock and sand. I think your Shimek book talks about this. There's a common misconception that having a big polluted mess of a cycle will somehow "charge" the tank with lots of extra bacteria. That's simply not the case; the bacteria population in any tank is directly dependent on substrate and available nutrients. IOW, assuming you have adequate rock/sand, the bacteria will increase and decrease in numbers according to your bioload. More importantly, though, you want to avoid killing all sorts of other micro-life that comes in on good quality liverock. These animals will form the basis of your sand bed fauna. Protein skimmers, especially a fairly low powered one like the prizm (even "pro") don't remove significant planktonic life, and what you mostly have at this point in your tank's life is rock/sand fauna anyways. Later on, much of the larval production of this fauna will be planktonic, but even then, studies have shown that most skimmers don't remove a high percentage of this life. This was shown by analizing skimmate; I think Shimek did that one, too.

Again, sorry to disagree; no offense intended