Imo, about the best information got so far was snazy telling you more bacteria is in one's substrate than most think or believe and those folks telling you ammonia is less of an issue in acid waters.
Had I seen this thread sooner I would have warned you not to dose Prime beyond the the normal dose when your are working to start or repair a cycle- it has the opposite effect. It will slow things. Even more importantly, it will make your ammonia test kit unreliable.
Under the conditions of a salicylate kit the ammonia-Prime complex will be broken down eventually giving a false reading of ammonia (same as with other products like Prime®), so the key with a salicylate kit is to take the reading right away.
From
http
/www.seachem.com/support/FAQs/Prime.html
Most aquarium kits are salicylate based.
At your pH and temp., ammonia even at 4 ppm on the standard aquarium test kits is absolutely no short term danger to fish as the amount of NH3, the toxic form, is virtually absent. A tank with a pH of 6.5, a temp. of 78F and a reading of 4 ppm ammonia will have all of .007 ppm of NH3, all the rest will be the much less harmful NH4+ aka ammonium. The danger level for NH3 is somewhere between .02 and .05 ppm depending upon the situation and fish involved. The absolute one thing you want to avoid here is anything that will suddenly raise your pH much over 7.0
There is no point in transferring water as very little of the bacteria that handles cycling is there.
There is also little point in getting any of the bottled live nitrifying bacteria as pouring them into water with a pH below 6.5 is going to kill most of them. It needs to worked down gradually from being established first at 7.0 or above to keep it functioning well.
If you are using a typical nitrite test kit, then 1 ppm is not a real danger short term on the scale used by such test kits. What you do not really want to see happen is for it to rise much or not to drop.
Bear in mind your new setup was not uncycled, it was just not fully cycled any more. So the amount of time and effort it would of taken to get it back up to strength should have been fairly short had you basically done nothing but monitor. Remember- under decent conditions the ammonia oxidizers would do so in around 12 hours and the nitrite oxidizers in a few hours more.
As for the chlorine/chloramine issue. Chlorine is the more dangerous of the two. Chloramine coming out of one's tap will not kill the bacteria, it will basically put it to sleep. Dechlor or time will break the bonds leaving small amounts of chlorine which out gasses and of ammonia, which causes the bacteria to revive and start working again. Chlorine will out gas pretty fast and so is not likely to be present long enough to damage established bacteria. It takes chlorine roughly 39 times as long to penetrate the bio-film in which the bacteria live than chloramine do. So while the chlorine is more harmful to the bacteria, it goes away faster on its own. In light of the fact that you have done water changes up until now without using dechlor and had no ill effects makes me doubt this was much of an issue here. Chlorine and chloramine are much more of an issue for fish etc. than for the bacteria.
I would be as much in tune with how the fish are acting than to the test kit results at the numbers and parameters you are reporting. If the fish are behaving normally, then the odds are good the levels are not harming them, especially if the exposure lasts just is a day or two. If they were suffering ill effects you would notice them behaving differently. They might hide, not eat, be less active, be at the surface a lot etc. In fact, such behavioral cues can often indicate there is a problem one's test kits failed to detect.
At this point the only reason I can see to do a water change is to get all the excess prime out of the water. Water changes will certainly make it take longer for you to have the tank become fully cycled again. Unless the fish tell you differently, just watch the nitrite level- if it rises or fails to drop after a day or so, then consider taking action.
In the end you will have to do what you believe to be the best way to go. Especially since I am advising you to do pretty much the opposite of much of what has been advised in this thread. But before you decide I would ask you to remember your own words "Wouldnt i have exoected to have lost fish with ammonia this high"
