I hate my tank!

[jslaney]

Sorry this is a bit of vent with a few questions at the end.

First the specs:
-72 gallon with a 20 gallon sump
-Single strip of Power Compact Fluorescents (New Bulbs)
-Vertex 100 Skimmer.
-Approx 70 lbs of dead rock and 30 lbs of live rock added 2 months ago.
-Shallow sand bed.
-Specific Grav = 1.026
-Nitrates < 10 ppm
-PH = 8.3
-Phosphate < 0.2 ppm
-Alk = 10 dkh
-Calcium = 675 ppm

Second the history
-Tank started up 3 months ago.
-Dead and live rock added 2 months ago. Live rock added to seed dead rock. Dead rock from bulk reef supply.
-10 scarlet hermits added 1.5 months ago (doing great).
-2 weeks ago skimmer added. prior to this it was a skimmerless tank.
-Water top ups performed using tap water that is let out for a minimum of 24 hrs.
- I have changed 20 % of the water twice since beginning

Third the problems.
-After 3 months I would have hoped for lavish growth of Coraline with tons of pods and small starfish infesting every nook and cranny. What I have instead is Tons of cyano growth and very few small pods on the glass (barely visible).
-I have added snails on 2 separate occasions and they shrink up immediately upon entering my water and die after a couple days.
-I feel like a failure as I cant even keep snails alive. My hermits are fine so I would figure anything really bad would kill them as well.
-I am scared to add anything else in case they die as well. My parameters say everything is fine but I am not sure.


Fourth my Caveat.
-I appreciate that people have lost thousands of dollars in corals in one night so I should really not be complaining about not being able to keep snails but to a novice its really frustrating. I jsut want my tank to look nice like the ones I see in the forum. Instead it looks like really expenisive rock covered in Brown sludge.

Fifth my questions
-Any ideas why snails die so easily in my tank?
-Any ideas on how I can get the coraline and pods growing in my tank?
-I have not been testing for ammonia or nitrites as the tank has been running for so long. Should I be? Is there anything else I am missing.
-I never rinsed the dead rock when I got it. Is it possible that they treated it with something harmful that is still in my tank? It looked awfully bleached when I first got it.

Sixth, thanks for listening to my whining and thanks to anyone that can answer.

Sincerely,

Jon