i have heard on this board that the filter part was ok but the skimmer might as well not be there for the job it does (hardly anything) but i dont have any experience with this so...
The Emperor filters do a great job on just raw mechanical filtration on our freshwater tanks. You can take out the chemical grate thingy and just double up on filter pads if you wish. The only thing I'd want is a way to add your own custom cut filter pads and get rid of all the carbon - i sense a chemical filtration grate mod .