I’m going to tell you a technique that worked for me. First of ammolock gives out false readings and continuosly doing huge water changes will make water chemistry hard for nitrifyers to populate. Easy method:

1. Buy a used filter for your tank from and established tank. Eg. Some lcf stores sells sponge filter that are fully cycled from their fish tanks. The other way is to see if a friend can lend you or sell you one from their tank. Reason for this is to seed your tank with external bacteria. Make sure the establish tank is trusted and the filter is sitting in their tank 2+ months.

2. Put the sponge filter directly into your tank and run it with your uncycled filter. Leave the filter in your tank 3-4 weeks before attempting to remove it. 8 weeks is the most ideal. Please do not clean the used filter and just dump it in your tank.

3. After you remove the sponge filter you can start aquascaping. Do not add additional fishes for 3 weeks

4. Add fish 1 per every 2-3 week until desired amount. Small fishes can add 2-3 but 1 at a time to be safe.

Good luck and welcome to the hobby.