bak pak 2 question

[Richard Lewis]

I have a question that I haven't seen answered before and thought I would throw it out to the list and get comments.  I have a 55 gal tank with 5 blue-green chromis, two tomato clowns, a cleaner shrimp, crabs, snails, limpets, peppermint shrimp, a feather duster, some mushrooms, and polyp rocks.  I have both live rock and a live sand substrate.  I have a CPR Bak Pak 2 skimmer.  My question has to do with the "bio-media" (actually just tangled curled plastic strips) in the return section of the skimmer.  It seems to be (at least in my opinion) more of a breeding ground for algae than anything else.  In fact the instructions for the skimmer say to rinse the bio-media in saltwater periodically to clean it.  When I've done that, all the algae, etc. was washed off the material and it was back to square one as far as any bilogical filtring was concerned.  My question is this,  what am I losing, if anything, by removing the "bio-media" and doing without it all together?  I have an Emperor 400 filter, and with the live rock and live sand do I really need the extra algae farm?  Pro and Cons?    Thanks in Advance, Rich Lewis