problems with cycling

[DylFunk]

I've been fishless cycling my tank for about 5-6 weeks now and i'm starting to get worried. ive been adding ammonia and everything and testing water daily. so about 4 weeks ago, my nitrite spiked and kept getting higher. its now at a point where my nitrite keeps getting higher, my ammonia goes down very slowly considering speed of nitrite rising (about 6ppm to 4 ppm in about a week), and my nitrate wont budge.
now i cant accuratly read my nitrite because it past the 5ppm mark (magenta) then went to clear, then to light brown, then light blue (not quite the same as 0ppm blue shade, and then to light green. i do water changes but i can barely get my nitrites to hit 5ppm with a 95% water change. i checked my test kit by testing my tap and it reads 0ppm so my kits fine. whenever i do water changes i use stress coat at specified amount ( usually slightly higher since i kinda go by eye).

anyway i need some help figureing out how to fix this. i dont really want to get any seeding material from my lfs because one is a petco and the other ones employees wouldn't know how to do it and i dont think theyd want me walking them through it.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, since i'm going on vacation in a couple of weeks and i would like to have some fish in there to keep it going.

 

[yvez9]

why do you add stress coat in a tank without any fish in it?
have you reduced the ammonia amount you add each day and is ammoni aat 0ppm everyday before you add any more?

too much ammonia wil hurt your bacteria culture

I'd stop adding ammonia until it has gone down to 0 and then add a few drops

 

[DylFunk]

i usually try to keep my ammonia between 2 ppm to 6 ppm adding ammonia once it gets down to 2ppm to bring it back up to around 5-6ppm. and i use stress coat to dechlorinate my water.

 

[dirtydogg]

I'm no expert, but I just cycled a 10G fishless, and I didn't do any water changes until after the cycle had completed. I didn't watch it so carefully though, I stopped measuring the ammonia after the nitrite spiked, kept adding 3 drops of ammonia until the nitrite went down to 0ppm. I then started checking ammonia everyday for a week(before adding the three drops), just to make sure it was completely done.
I slowed down adding ammonia once I got it to a consistent 2ppm, I assumed I was simulating an ammonia spike. Also, some media from an established tank helps a ton.