u/Due_Aide2299

I got this plant in a cute little pot from petco but a friend told me to take it out eventually. I did and I had it in the substrate but now I think it goes tied to the driftwood? Help?

New here. I have a 10g tank heavily planted. I “cycled” it for 3 months and the API test literally never changed parameters everything was 0 across the board and pH was 6.4
After 3 months of dosing fish food, stability, and Litterally no change we decided to get fish and brought home 5 neon tetras and 3 rummy nose tetras.

After 1 week everyone was doing well and so now In hindsight rookie mistake decided to add more fish. after the first feeding everyone died. Except 1 fish and 2 Nerite snails and 3 shrimp. It was terrible.
We acted right away did a 80% water change, Prime, and tried to just move on with the animas still alive.
Since then. The pH was terrifyingly low below 6, so I added 1/4 bag of coral media.
After 1 week, pH is back to 6.8, kH is 2 and gH is 5. But we lost 1 more shrimp.

It’s been 2 weeks now, and I’ve done 20% water changes every other day and still everything across the board and now my ammonia is finally showing color, light green maybe .25-.5ppm and nitrate nitrite 0

I no longer know what to do and am getting extremely discouraged but I don’t want to keep losing my friends. Please help how do I continue, how do I now, do a successful fish in cycle

I have been doing 20% water changes dosing Prime about every other day but I don’t know if this is enough nor do I know HOW to tell when and if my cycle is finally DONE this API kit never showed Nitrite nor Nitrate and all I found on the internet was that my plants successfully cleaned them out so that’s why I thought it was good to go.

Please help, I’ll reply quickly if more clarification is needed