Ammonia spike with Frits turbo start

[Alec Williams]

I have been attempting to cycle a 5 gallon as I have been trying to get back into fish keeping. I used fritz turbo start 700 but after 2 weeks the ammonia was still reading super high and the nitrates were comparatively low (4-8 and 5ppm respectively). I recently dosed again as my nitrates dropped to 0 and after a few hours it’s still not reading any nitrates. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas as to how I should proceed? Managing water parameters has never been very enjoyable to me and this is only starting to put me off of it again. 

[HH Morant]

Bacteria-in-a-bottle products don't work.

If they worked, nobody would ever cycle a tank any other way. Why would they?

If bacteria-in-a-bottle products worked, there would not be hundreds of videos out there on how to cycle tanks without them.

[Alec Williams]

While I appreciate the comments. This doesn’t help me in any way. Thank you nonetheless.