protein skimmer/cycle question

This might be a stupid question but I'm new to this. During the cycle period, did you guys protein skimmer remove a lot of waste? Mine has only removed some dark green waste when I added the sand and that's it. Besides that it's just been fizzing like a soda this whole time. I started my cycle with dry rock and live sand on Monday (4 days ago). I cured my rock for 2 weeks before. My nitrite level, I just checked, is around 0.5ppm