Laurent - just my opinions as always:
1) I'd get a new nitrate test - after a year the old test kit chemicals may not be good anymore. Keep in mind that something has to be feeding the algae - it could be that you have a lot of nitrates, but they are all being consumed by the algae and won't show up in the tests. Do you think you're overfeeding the fish and corals? Just my opinion, but I very rarely ever add any coral foods and my corals do great without it. IMO the coral foods are only good for adding excess detritis to the tank, and very little, if any, are ever consumed by the corals before they settle in the tank and/or are removed by mechanical filtration. Unless you have corals that are non-photosynthetic I feel that they do just fine on light energy alone.
2) I can't remember - are you using RO/DI water?
3) I had to get rid of my Fluval cannister. Even with a weekly cleaning/rinsing, and replacing Chemipure Elite and other media much more frequently than the directions, my nitrates climbed from 0 to over 30 while running the cannister. I wasn't running any ceramic or LR rubble in my cannister. Since pulling the cannister they dropped to 5 then 2.5, and are now at 0 - 0.5 using a small daily dose of 10 drops of AZNO3 to keep them down. I now have a pad and my chemical media in a "media basket" that sits under the gate. But the media basket is only any option if you replace the RSM skimmer so that there's room for the basket. I suppose a short basket could be made, that would fit over the RSM skimmer pump, but I haven't seen anyone offering those for sale. You might be able to DIY a short basket from acrylic or even eggcrate if you want to take on a little project. I'm trying to make maintaing the tank as easy as possible, without a lot of time consuming work. I've even skipped a few weekly water changes lately (got lazy), but will try to get back to a weekly or every other week schedule.
4) Reef crystals here too, but I often alternate with IO and Red Sea Pro salt. I also add a daily dose of 2 part Ca/Alk to keep my Ca about 450, and my Alk at about 10 dKh. I always seem to be fighting to keep my pH above 8, but adding a buffer to my top off water has helped with that.
It sounds like things are improving for you a little so that's good news.
grandy - I didn't realize that you had moved the brain. Hopefully that alone will bring it back to good health. My brain recently shrunk down for over a week, and I was really worried about mine too. But, it's back to looking healthy again now. I'm not sure what caused that to happen.
MrsPeer- you got a real bargain on the RBTA's!!! And great to hear the clowns have taken to them (well one at least!). IMO the stock lights are fine - the RSM lights have always been capable of more than they get credit for (the great light debate between owners & non-owners LOL). I'll check out your pics when I get home from work today.
Now if we could only get
SWFish (Kent) to reappear in here once in a while!