Need some advice on fishless cycle

[Conorluc]

So I've been fishless cycling for about 9 - 10 days. I have a 20 gallon long and I added Ace ammonia about 4 ml so the ammonia was around 4 - 5 pm. I added some Api quickstart double the dosage for a 20 gallon and I also squeezed out the filter in my classrooms into a cup and poured that into my tank. Their is a nice waterfall on the back for air. The ph is high. Also I have a heater, but I think it might be messed up since the water fluctuates from warm to colder throught the days.

My problem is that I had 4pm ammonia and it dropped to about 2pm in three now its been stuck at 1pm since Thursday(4 days) Is that weird that the ammonia would drop then stop dropping?

Also I have a very low number of nitrites like not a purple but a purplish blue. Also I got a reading of it being a high purple the other day but then it was blue again after a night.

Nitrates are about 5pm.

I also heard that phosphates are needed so I added some phosphate rich fertilizer to my aquarium for that. (it also has ammonia and nitrates in it)

Tl:dr is is normal for my ammonia to take a week plus to drop to 0? I thought it would be churning it out now but its been four days and the ammonia has been stuck at 1pm.

 

[Rivercats]

You don't need phosphates to cycle a tank and are only needed in planted tanks after cycling.

With you having added a cycling aid (which works for some and not for others) and possibly some BB from your class tank filter you obviously have enough BB to process some of the ammonia but not all of it. Which means right now it's not moving because it's building up more Nitrosomonas to process it. Usually you would want to dose back up to 4ppm when you get down to 1ppm. As for having low numbers of nitrites, in this case you obviously have enough Nitrobacter to process nitrites to nitrates.

 

[Conorluc]

Is just squeezing out the filter media from the hang on back filter give me enough to seed? also will fluctuating temps kill my bacteria?

 

[Rivercats]

Is just squeezing out the filter media from the hang on back filter give me enough to seed? also will fluctuating temps kill my bacteria?

You could have been lucky with the cycling product your used and any little bit of BB you added will help. And when doing a fishless cycle turning your heater up will quicken the cycle. So the lower the temp the slower the bacteria will grow and the higher the temp the quicker it grows.