Algae Reactor or Scrubber?

[Nstocks]

 I'm trying to decide if I want to go with a algae scrubber or algae reactor. The reactor comes in at £170 - £280 and something like a Santa Monica scrubber is around £300 delivered to the UK , or I can try to DIY either of them, the scrubber will me the least expensive to DIY.

 

If hair algae grows quicker than cheato, would an algae reactor almost always lose the battle against GHA in the display?

 

Calupera grows faster than Cheato, but not as fast as GHA, so the algae reactor still loses?

 

Hair algae is the fastest growing algae (well, maybe not) and the way to grow this is on a scrubber (not a reactor).

 

Reactor is will be silent, but the scrubbers will likely have some noise due to the waterfall effect and possible dripping at the base of the mesh screen.

 

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

 

[dmw913]

I've had decent success on my Reefer 250 with a DIY reactor running chaeto.  I bought an Aquamaxx reactor and some LEDs from Amazon.  Super-cheap DIY.