I like having algae in my tank when I first add fish. Algae consumes ammonia directly so can help provide an insurance policy. No need to have them on before you are ready to get fish though and some people don't want to deal with algae. I'm a fan of a very large CuC but not everyone is.
I wouldn't say that it is normal, but it isn't terribly unusual. There are many chemical equilibriums that occur in a tank when it is set up. The ammonia cycle (cycling) is only one of them. It's possible that there is a chemical reaction occurring with your rocks and/or sand making it bind calcium. The reactions are one of many reasons coral tend to not do well in a new reef tank but can do just fine in a newly set up frag tank.
You aren't going to be able to add too many nitrifying bacteria. Not an issue. You can do a water change to start lowing nitrites or let it go and do its thing, either will work. Many of the bottled bacteria products are more effective at processing ammonia than nitrites so what you are seeing isn't uncommon. It's also one reason why I don't like dosing back up to 2ppm daily as some people recommend. To me, that builds up nitrites and nitrates necessarily high. I prefer to let it drop to close to 0.25ppm ammonia before bringing it back up. If it process the ammonia in a day I don't redose again.
I wouldn't add fish until your nitrites are at 0ppm, or darn close to it. If that happens tomorrow than I would say yes, you could add fish. The larger your water change, the faster that is likely to happen. And no, you won't remove enough good bacteria doing a water change to make a difference.
No problem, and yes, I would stop with the ammonia dosing.
After water change is ideal because you don’t wanna suck them out,I didn’t do water changes for the first month of establishing my tank just top offs with distilled water. I TDS and copper tested prior. Pods have a free roaming larvae stage the ones I got were in this stage. Pods are pretty much indestructible they can tolerate salinity swings to 1.040 in some cases and poor water conditions, they are like cockroaches but die in low salinity. After the one month I did a 10% water change and began doing them weekly. I compulsion bought a blood red fire shrimp at Petco $18 bucks online they are line $60 so I was like ok he looks healthy and active I want lol, my case the nutri seawater and pods along with phytoplankton food probably helped me keep stable water conditions, nutri seawater is marketed as packed with 10,000 types of natural marine bacteria so that probably helped me.
I dunno my rule of thumb is 1 tablespoon per 10 gallons every 3.5 days. Never noticed a harmful impact on PH. Only did it till my 16.5oz ran up to cycle with pods. After my pest jellyfish issue subsides I’m gonna have to get more pods because I’m committing pod genocide to get rid of thier food source
If you get a pest jellyfish issue like mine ina nano i find more flow and adding 2 clowns and a finger coral seems to be cutting their numbers down from 1000+ to 50 or so
