I have the MSX and it works extremely well. The pump is very quiet and it draws in around 50cfh of air. I run ozone on mine since everything is ozone safe.
The bubbler plate inside is what impresses me. The bubbles entering the skimmer enter a lower chamber where they swirl violently in a circle, increasing the dwell time of the bubbles within the water column. Then the bubbles rise up through the bubbler plate which eliminated the swirling and causes them to finish rising through the column toward the collection cup. I've noticed a very good down draft from this skimmer which means that it takes the bubbles a long time to finally rise up through the skimmer.
The longer the dwell time, the better. Like I said I run ozone and it usually takes a full 60 seconds from when the ozone turns on until I first notice the orp climbing on my orp meter. This means that it is taking a full minute before I get any noticeable ozone coming out of my skimmer. This is an indication of a good, long dwell time. If I turned on the ozone and immediately noticed a rise in orp then I would suspect that the ozone is coming out of the skimmer much sooner... which would be a bad thing.
I previously had a Kent TE venturi skimmer fed with this ozone setup and would notice a rise in orp 10 seconds after the ozone turned on. When the ozone turns itself off, the orp in the tank would rise to 360mv and then fall back down again. With the MSX skimmer the ozone rises to 430mv. This shows that it is far more effective at retaining ozone within the skimmer and maintains a much higher water quality. Simply put, the ozone within the MSX reacts with the water far better than did the ozone in the Kent skimmer.
I usually empty my collection cup weekly. It produces a very dark, almost black skimmate. My Kent was only able to do a light green... The MSX is pulling far more from the tank.
The pump is much quieter and uses less electricity than did my old Rio pump. It also pulls more water. It's better all around. It comes with a mesh wheel mod and some extra mesh. You can also use the included pinwheel impeller if you don't want to fool around with the mesh.
Adjusting the MSX is as easy as rotating the output shaft. Turn it clockwise to lower the water column, turn it counter-clockwise to increase it. Tune it until you get dark black skimmate. The venturi is self cleaning and so it avoids the salt buildup that affect most other venturies. In the end... If I had filled my skimmer up with milk I probably couldn't tell the difference. The bubble column is very white and dense. The "head" that develops at the collection cup breaths up and down as it pulls organics from the system...
Here's a video of it in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rMj0o0Aehs
In it you can see how well the bubbler plate swirls the mix and then smooths it out as it rises up through the column. Also, I have no microbubbles in the tank...
