Limit Cash vs Tourn. Possible to be good in one and not the other?

[Pylos]

As a player beginning and building my bankroll I play primarily online in $0.25/0.50 limit hold ‘em games. Live I play at the Bike and Commerce in LA in the $1/2 and $2/4 games. I frequently peruse the forums here for information and I wanted to say thank you all for your advice and tutelage, even if it has been passive.

I understand that I may just recently have been grazing a suitable statistical sample, in the past 3 months I have played around 25k hands. The starting hand strategy I use is consistent with Small Stakes Hold ‘em: Winning Big With Expert Play. I feel as if I have a good grasp of post flop and river play as well. It seems, however, that in ring games I am playing catch up most of the time. I sit, I play the hands I am allotted to play and as aggressively as I believe I can, yet I end up after a few hours balancing out my stack. Most of the time in live play, after 4-5 hours I will even up again and win a monster of a pot and cash out before I end up balancing it out again, while online it seems like I can never really walk away with significant earnings.

From my estimation this could be for a couple reasons:

1. It is a small stakes game and especially online, the stakes are so miniscule that even taking home 10+ BBs after 2 hours of play seems like nothing.

2. I am not playing as aggressive as I should. Although it feels as if I am following the advice that has been given here and within the books I have been reading.

3. I’m simply not that good and haven’t mastered these smaller ring games to snake a profit from them.

The real joker in the equation is I play sit-and-go’s frequently. Always limit hold ‘em on Stars and usually within the $5-$20 range. These are usually 9 player one table tournaments, but occasionally I will opt for a 18 player 2 table. I start off very tight when the blinds are low and take a few monsters. Then I will loosen up so much towards the end that I find many will fold and I am able to pick up some pots with some semi-bluffs and cards weaker then usual. Within my last 15 tournaments I have ended up in the money in 13 of them. I would count that as significant, even with such a low sample size.

Is tournament play at all reflective on ring game play? If not what on earth am I doing that consistently rewards me for my play in tournaments that I am not getting paid off for in my ring games?