BkkprGal- take a deep breath and relax. The biggest cause of cycling issues is overthinking everything. Just a basic understanding of how it all works makes it a lot easier to cycle.
1. Cycling is a process, its take the time it takes. So the first skill needed to be good at cycling is patience.
2. Cycling is a microscopic process. We cannot see any of it. We have to rely on testing to know what is going on.
Also, you can use Dr. Tim's or Tetra. I prefer the Dr. Tim's, he is the one who actually dicovered it all while he was the head of the Marineland labs. For this reason Dr. T and Marineland share the patent rights. When Marineland was bought by a conglomerate which also owned Tetra, they transferred the bacterial production to Tetra and called it Safe Start. While the two products have diverged a bit over the years, they still contain the same bacteria.
The patents cover both the bacteria and the methods for detecting them which is why they contain Nitrospira and other starter products do not. The competitors are forced to use Nitrobacter which is a strain of nitrite oxidizers which thrive at much higher nitrite levels than are found in established tanks. As a result they get replaced by Nitrospira by the time the cycle is done.
I will never use Stability for cycling as it is a bottle of bacterial spores and the nitrifying bacteria do not form spores.
BkkprGal
If you want I would be happy to work with you one on one to get your tank cycled. The only problem is I have a medical procedure on Thursday that may take a few days from which to recover. So I will likely be offline for a couple of days. How many depends on which potential post procedure complications I have. It could be none or it could be a few- toss a coin.
Whether you choose Dr. Tim's or Safe Start, go to the respective site and follow their directions for cycling with their product. Ignore the instructions on this site, including mine. They do not apply when seeding a tank with bacteria.
If you use a proper bottled bacteria it will fully cycle a tank in 7-10 days. There is no fake out. I have done this many times. I have cycled my bio-farms this way as well. It takes me about 2 weeks to cycle 12-15 filters going into 6 -8 tanks holding a total of a couple of 100 gallons. Read the fishless cycling directions on Dr. T's or Terta's site and they will tell you what I stated above. And I am also telling you it is accurate. You can fully cycle a tank in even less than a week in some cases.
The biggest problem after too much ammonia is too little inorganic carbon. The key yo monitoring this is your KH. This is mostly carbonates and bicarbonates and the bacteria can use these. To prevent lack of carbon being an issue, just keep an eye on the KH. Do not let of drop too low (1 or 2 dg) because the next step is it is gone and then the cycle stalls. The solution is to put a bag of crushed coral in ones filter or tank. One clue that KH is being used up is that the pH of the water will be dropping. KH is what keeps pH stable.
One last suggestion. Before you start over I would suggest you go here
https://fins.actwin.com/aquariafaq.html When there click on
Your First Aquarium. The part you should read is the Section on
Practical Freshwater Chemistry. Ignore the part on
Speeding Up Cycling, at least the part with the products to help as none of them contain the proper bacteria.
