need setup help for multiple links to multiple colorbox galleries on views page

I have a views page that lists multiple items, and each item needs to have a link that the user can click to see a gallery of images. I've tried this with the colorbox link field and it seemed like it almost worked (see second issue below) but when I added a second piece of content to show up on the page (so now there are 2 item and there will need to be dozens eventually) everything falls apart. Now the galleries show only 2 images and both items have more than 2 images. So what am I doing wrong or is what I'm trying to do even possible?

Another issue I was having was setting when I only had one item in my view was that "Content image style for first image: no special style" produced a colorbox with no content in it, just a blank white bg and no controls or anything. If I changed the setting to the image style I created for my gallery, when the trigger is clicked a colorbox shows with the first image but no controls but I can click the image anywhere and then the colorbox advances to the first slide and the controls are there. So I'm actually getting a duplicate of the first slide.

How do I get rid of the duplicate?

Any help with either of these issues greatly appreciated.