Hey mumma. Ive been down that road already and didnt even put a dent in it. I have a external canister rated for 79gal on a 30gal tank. There is biomax in the filter. I have quite a few smaller unmature fish in the tank. There are three balloon mollies (which poop like crazy) two unmature platies, two young honey gourami, one dwarf gourami, a cory cat, a jaguar sim cat, a very small still clown pleco added only recently (because my phantom is a lazy cleaner), my phantom pleco, several young gbr and an african butterly. Some of these fish were added once i believed the tank had cycled after the bacteria bloom cleared up but the ammonia level has never changed.
It occured to me today to ask if the use of ammolock might be immeding my cycle. I thought maybe its causing a buildup of unprocessable ammonia. She recommended a product made by prime. Its a water conditioner that also neutralizes nitrites and nitrates and removes ammonia through a process of binding it. (Least thats the explaination i understood)
The general impression with everyone i ask is that it takes longer to cycle a tank with fish and that in addition to using the prime i should add some extra biomax because the tank is trying to cycle if there are nitrite and nitrate levels.
So until this stuff is able to remove the ammonia I'm planning to do lots of small water changes to get it to a more manageable level. Ill be home all day tomorrow ill try the suggestion i received in the past to take a day and do several 50% water changes over the course of a couple of hours to try to halve the levels several times. Maybe between that and the prime i can bring them down.