Tiffany,
I am sorry you feel that you are being bashed. When we find mistakes that seem blatently obvious to us, we make assumptions.
No one here is trying to hurt your progress, but only wish to help.
The # of fish in a 55 gallon tank is not relevant, but size is. You tank for a reef tank is overloaded, and the biological filter can not keep up with it.
I assume that you are trying to get the 20 gallon tank going as a reef tank if I am reading you post correctly. You should go back to a deep sand bed. I currently have a 80 gallon tank with crushed coral, and no problems. It has been up for 10+ years. It has an undergravel filter to boot. I would not recommend doing it this way though, even though it worked for me, it does not work for most people, and can crash, killing everything fairly easily.
Get a DSB of about 4", add live rock until you get about 20-30 lbs. Make sure you have good lighting, and good water flow. Let the tank cycle, and go from there. It is good to have a good skimmer, but is not 100% necessary.
The people here have a nothing to gain by helping you, and it would be to your best interest to listen to them. I started my first saltwater tank over 30 years ago, and I am still learning.
Your new tank will finish the cycle when the nitrates drop to 0, unless you are over feeding. Like Adrian said, the cynobacteria is probably from to many nutrients in the tank, poor water flow, or poor lighting. Get the books back out and do some reading. One of my earlier reef tanks took 6 weeks to cycle, so do not rush things, it just depends on what you did in reference to LR, substrate, etc. Two months is not a lot of time for the biological filter to get balanced for the bio load.
In the larger tank, good luck getting the nitrates down unless you add a refugium, do water changes, cut back on feeding, possibly add some macro-algea, etc. When was the last time you change your lighting on the 55 gallon tank?
During a cycle first your ammonia will rise, then fall while the nitrites rise, then the trites will fall as the nitrates rise, once the nitrates fall to undetectable levels the cycle is over. The maroon carpet algae your reffering to is called cyanobacteria and is usually the result of excess nutrients, poor lighting, poor current or a combo of 2-3 of these. Usually it has to do with nurtrient buildup which is a result of overfeeding, lack of a skimmer or other means of nutrient export, ie carbon, refugium, water changes, DSB, or a combination of more than one of these. Give us a good run down of your system and its history so we can help you further.
