Questions about cycling and hitchikers

[Kimlafeiet]

I am a little confused abuot my cycle. Is it normal to have both ammonia AND nitrates at the same time? Tank is 10 days set up, added a few live rock pieces about 6 days ago to help seed my base rock. Apx 5-7ish lbs live rock from 2 different sources. I had no readings of anything before adding the lr, and then got sick with the flu so I havent tested again until tonight, but my tests showed
.25 - .50 ammonia
0 nitrites
5 nitrates
I have been "feeding" the tank with food to start the cycle. I also have 1 little hermit crab and 2 snails that came in on my live rock, and all 3 of them are doing well. Should I try the "raw shimp" thing to get it going, or is it going ok? Is it normal to see nitrates and ammo, but no trites?

Since I have been so sick, I havent really even looked at the tank since I added the rock, so tonight I gave it a good look. Found a couple tiny aiptasia growing on the live rock (two of the pieces I got from one source, none on the other pieces). Whats the best way to get rid of these things? Should I just pull the live rock? It it too late? The lr has great coraline and they are awesome pieces, but I am not sure I want to deal with aiptasia.
Also, I found what I believe to be a ball anemone. It came out tonight, and went right back in when I put light on it. So I let it come out again and tried to snap a pic. Will attach shortly. Are ball anemones good or bad?

One last thing. I have not been running lights on the tank. Heard it just causes algae problems. True or no? Should I run lights during the cycle? I bought a Red Sea Max 130 last week and plan to transfer everything over to it once I am feeling better, So hopefully all this wont set me too far back. Its kind of exciting to find things growing in my tank, evn if some of them are crappy aiptasias.

 

[Kimlafeiet]

Here is a pic of what I think might be a ball anemone?

 

[cnaugh]

The cycle part of your question I may can help. I had my 75 gal showing a little ammonia and a little nitrates for a couple of weeks during the cycle. It seemed the two would never really do anything and even caused me to re read the directions on the test kit to assure myself I was doing it right. After getting irritated and impatient I threw, umm, probably more raw shrimp in than I should have. Saw the ammonia spike for a few days, then Nitrite jumped for a few days. Then magically they both hit zero. Nitrates were high at that point so I did the 50% water change. Just to see, and because I'm hard headed, I threw in more shrimp, never even saw a reading!

All that to say, I'm no where near an expert like most of these folks, but I think your cycle may be stalled. If you're hard headed like me, jump start it, it worked for me!

 

[cnaugh]

And I hope u get to feeling better soon!

 

[Kimlafeiet]

Thank you.
I was wondering if my cycle is stalled, I think I will add some shrimp and see what happens.