Refugium predicament

About three weeks ago I upgraded my 28G tank to my new 60G tank. Along with the upgrade came the addition of a ~20G sump with a ~7G refugium section. I posted a previous topic about my chaeto beginning to turn transparent and I am still having issues with it dying off. Along with the cheato dying, I have a decent amount of algae blooming to the point that I have to clean my tank every day or there is a visible film on the acrylic that I don't want to let grow. My sump has hair algae growing in it, but the cheato is dying.... I tested everything today and the results are as follows:

Salinity - 1.025
Temp - 79-81
pH - 8.2
Ammonia - 0.0
Nitrite - 0.0
Nitrate - Not detected (but certainly not 0.0)
Phosphate - .25
KH - 7 (odd its a little low, usually its at 9-10)
Calcium - Tested over 500 but gave a response at 520, so between 500-520 (also odd, as my 28G was consistently between 440 and 480)
Magnesium - Unable to test, test kit is out
I use a SpectraPure MaxCap 5 stage system for my water and I tested it for PO4 with a negative result

So herein lies the question: Do I ditch the cheato now and move over to biopellets or GFO in a reactor? I wanted to run biopellets later on, but with my current algae problem I don't want to let the algae get out of hand. I believe my problem with the cheato is twofold. First, I have a light load in the 60G tank right now which consists of a clown, firefish, YWG, two shrimp and a total of five corals. Second, between the very efficient skimmer and filter sock, I believe I may be in the realm of "too clean" of water to sustain the cheato, but somehow I am able to grow microalgae at a crazy rate.

I really don't want to ditch cheato, since that is the reason I added a sizable refugium so maybe I could run mangroves and some other macros? I know mangroves don't really fit the bill of "efficient" nutrient transport, but I am at the point that the cheato isn't surviving, so I need an alternate method to kill off the nuisance algae until I can get my new fish out of quarantine and into the tank. The refugium will not be going offline no matter what, as it is a great pod factory right now and my mandarin will definitely benefit. The only thing is that I wanted to run a carbon reactor later on down the line and I don't think my cabinet or sump has the room for a carbon reactor AND a biopellet/GFO reactor, so I need to keep my space issue in mind as well. What do those with experience in this type of stuff think? Thanks.

 

How much light do you have over the chateo?
At 3 weeks in the algea bloom is normal and necesarry, it should clear up in a few more weeks as the tank continues to cycle and mature.

 

I have a 13W CFL 6500k over the cheato right now. I had a 26W 6500k bulb over it then switched it out two days ago, thinking it was too much light.

 

No way, I have a 26w 5500k from HD, and I wish i had two.

 

I lost some cheato to lack of light too. More light.
the bloom algea is from the Phosates, which will go down with time and h2o change.
And your other levels may be low because the hair algea is taking all the No3 out, but when it dies it go back into the tank. keep things clean, weekly changes and pull pull algea,
The tank just needs more cycle time