#cycle help

basically nitrites and ammonia are high, but the pH is normal (7.4) and the nitrates are also normal (20 ppm). so idk what to make of it. i’m dosing with prime so everyone’s safe.

Hello fishblr! I’m hoping to get some much needed advice on this fine night! I’ve started cycling my 55 gal on the 9th of Feb (using a dead shrimp at first but switching to pure ammonia after 2 days because UGH SMELL (+ it’s easier to control the ammonia readings)) ANYWAYS all was going smoothly and on the 24th of Feb my nitrItes were at 2/5 (colors are hard)ppm and my nitrAtes at 0.5ppm. Yes! The cycle is, well, cycling! Except that it’s been like this since then. My ammonia gets down to 0.25/0.50ppm, I add ammonia (to 4ppm), next day its disappeared, I add, and so on and so forth, with no change whatsoever to my nitrItes and nitrAtes. I tested my ph yesterday (the 8th of Mars) and got 6.4/6.6. Thinking it might be too low for the beneficial bacteria to grow, I did a 50% water change, which brought it back up to 7. I use Seachem prime as a dechlorinator (might seem counterproductive but I read this doesn’t affect the cycling process?) I’m really at a loss here! Am I being too impatient? Is there something I’m missing? :( Thank you so much for your time!!

Hey guys! I've been trying to do a fishless cycle on my tank for a few months now- and i thought it was going well until just now. I went on vacation for a week, and the tank was at the nitrite spike phase with the added ammonia dropping on a regular basis. I asked someone to add a little more ammonia to it twice over the week i was gone (i said one capful, which is probably ~15ML in a 20g tank. That’s the rate i’d been adding it before and everything was going well), but when i came back the levels were waaaaaay over 8ppm. Now the nitrite is gone and stable at 0, lots of nitrates, but the ammonia won't go away. It was off the charts, so i did a 60% change and since then it's been around 2-4ppm but still won't go down. It's been almost another week. Did my cycle crash? Am I now forced to start over? That would be a bummer.