I'm nodding my head fervently at Brad's advice and wishing I had said those things too.
Hmmm, I would sincerely hope that T5's last longer than 3 months.. I doubt that lights is the root cause here.
The red slime treatment I did was just one of the standard red slime treatments you can get. I forget which one I used this time but it was one of Chemiclean or just "Red Slime Remover" (if you ask at the store they'll know which one it is). It's a yellow powder that smells like banana and your water will go yellow at first and you'll freak right out and wonder what you did to your tank, and your skimmer will go nuts so you have to take it offline or just have it drain back into your tank, but in 2-3 days the cyano will be gone and you can start skimming again (at a low setting as it will skim out like nuts). You do also need to run carbon and do something like a 25% water change afterwards.
I suspect running red slime treatments is a "dirty little secret" a lot of reefers won't admit to, but do occasionally do. I've run them about a half-dozen times over the years when I've gotten desperate. I don't like to do it because it affects O2 levels in the tank but it really does work.
Another thing you can try is erythomycin but I haven't used it myself.
I should mention that one thing I did do at the same time as my red slime treatment was I bleached out my SW mixing bucket (30g rubbermaid), rinsed the HECK out of it, also rinsed the heck out of my RO/DI reservoir.
But yeah, stay the course. Brad hit the nail on the head. The downs makes us appreciate the ups, and frankly, if this stuff was super easy then everyone would be doing it.
