I think that's probably wishful thinking, lorindaleigh. It's quite possible that your tank has never cycled completely. You have no idea what your real test results have been because you thought the test strips were accurate.. which they're not. It's probably come real close to making it through the latter stages of your full cycle several times, but then something happened that killed off the progress you'd made, which put you right back to an earlier stage again... without even knowing it. None of the test reading results you taken until getting that new liquid test kit were reliable. So... when you thought it was safe enough, you've added a full stock of fish now that's producing a bioload on a continual basis that only a fully cycled tank can process. That alone will through the balance off.
If your tank was truly cycled, then wiping out a tiny percentage of bacteria when you clean a filter, or vacuum the gravel, or remove a flaoting plant is not going to jack up your ammonia levels. A real cycled tank will take such minor setbacks like those in stride.. with no measurable ammonia peak whatsoever.
The real problem now is you need to let the cycle (or mini-cycle) actually finish its course in a tank that's stocked full of fish already. That's a very difficult way to do this... you can expect to see very unpredictable test results because so much is off balance (but this time, they'll be accurate)... and it's going to take an real long time for everything to stablize.
Let the test kit results tell you now based on actual ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate readings when a water change becomes necessary to protect your livestock. You'll be changing a lot of water because of all those fish, believe me. Yes, you are overfeeding. And what's worse is that food is being left to decay and continue to foul this water (adding even more to the bioload) for a real long time. You don't need to throw in some food and let it sit there for 8-12 hours. Do some target feeding and anything left over that they didn't eat within 15-20 minutes gets removed then. Don't stop rinsing the goop from your filter or gravel vaccing it up from under the substrate. The less excess waste that stays in the tank for long periods reduces all the gunk the bacteria needs to convert.
I completed understand everything that you said but I don't think Im over feeding. I only feed once a day, rarely is it twice and its always a pinch of whatever type of food I feed that day. The food for the adf's has to sit there for awhile because they are slow eaters and they hunt for it. I put it in their little corner of the tank but they still hunt for it in that area. 8 to 12 hours is still probably too long but I can't just leave the adf's food in there for 20 minutes. I f I feed with blood worms, I feed 3 for each one (I dont know if thats too much or not), when its live worms I feed them one worm chopped up. These are small size worms. I pick out the big ones and put them outside when we buy the worms. The big ones are too fat for them to get in their mouths. I can hand feed 2 of them, 1 still won't come near my fingers. They do eat better when I let them hunt for it as well. I'm going to cut it all the way down to 60 to 90 minutes as see how they do. Almost all of its gone within the first 30 minutes anyways.
