Ok, so first I upgraded the forum but there was no improvement and the skin didn't work.
So, I found a better solution, we're using a new anti-spam feature that uses flash to assemble images:
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=2839This I think will spot bot spam completely, while also keeping the theme. The was no advantage of SMF 2.0 over the latest 1.1.14 that I seen. We'll upgrade it in the future if they put up a good skin.
I really want to get rid of those spam bots
God Speed!