Algae scrubber

[Money pit]

Bill, apparently at least from what I've read, as long as you remove the screen from the tank when you clean it, and clean every 7 days, the tank wont get green. Were you doing this and still getting green water? Mind you with a mixed reef, I'd be running carbon anyways.

GMGQ, yes I've looked at bioballs, at the moment I'm using prodibio, its working OK with 15% water changes. About as well as my old tank with 50% water changes as far as keeping NO3 down. If I got my calculator out I believe 50% water changes were cheaper. Being a more natural remedy along with the low cost is what catches my interest in the algae scrubbers. Provided of course they work.
My NO3 test kit kind of sucks, since the color of the dye is purple and the color chart is pink its difficult to tell what the reading is, but judging by the density of the color it looks like under 5 ppm NO3 using prodibio, so its working, but at $60 every 3 weeks it seems a bit expensive. My tank is a 40g with 30g sump, so I need to use as much as a 250g tank. If I went with Bio balls, I would have to by a reactor, as the only one I have now is running carbon. Or do the bio balls also polish the water?