I took a subway ride to my nearest decent fish store today. I saw that they had some nice macroalgae cheap. I grabbed one of those small floating breeder traps for livebearers (cost $4.99) and some algae, including chaeto, a couple caulerpa species, maybe some others. Stuck the algae in and pushed the trap to the back and voila, refugium and algae chamber installed.
You can see the hair algae that is already starting to grow on my PVC return in the 2nd pic. Definitely one of the big reasons for algae is to compete with hair algae for nutrients and hopefully starve it away. Also, I'm going out of town for over two weeks soon, so the pods this supplies should augment freeze dried/flake from the autofeeder.
Also, did quick Ca/Alk tests (AP test kits, colormetric so not the greatest): 380-400ppm Ca, 11dKH. Seems fine, I might up the ratio of Ca for a few days to push it up. I know 400+ is the goal for Ca, what about KH?