@Erick Armanii yes it's been an interesting week. My first rounds of testing made me believe these tests were completely useless and I remembered all the posts and videos I've seen in my up front research about people doing XYZ to their tank to fix a parameter(s), only to discover the hobby grade testing device was way off.
By now, I'm settling in. I do find having the cycling data on my parameters has helped, and it has a lot more to do with comparing than absolute values. I can even observe that (for example) while I don't know exactly what that ammonia test kit is trying to tell me, it's clearly darker than it was the day before when I tested, and this becomes useful information- better than being "blind" and having no idea- better than having made no attempt to test the water.
(I decided to test phosphorous and other parameters not necessarily important yet, because I thought it might later be useful to have an early reading, and wanted to see if some rumors about what all of this pukani rock might do to the water were true (so far, they aren't).)