Test kits will often show ammonia that is "detoxified" by conditioners such as Prime or Ammolock. The kits that do leave you no way to know if the ammonia you see will hurt your fish, but it is present. In a cycled tank, the ammonia should go away whether it its "detoxified" or not, becoming first nitrite and then nitrate.
If you are seeing ammonia, you are in a cycle, if only a mini one.
Take all the new tank precautions, add Prime or Ammo-lock, change water, and seed the filter media with bio-spira, stability, or media from an established tank.
Most likely it was something you did that disrupted you biological filtration and you need to rebuild it. However, it is possible for the bio-load a.k.a. fish to outgrow the filter's ability to remove their waste. When this happens you will have ammonia no matter what you do until you add another filter.
It can also happen if something has hurt the filter's ability to move water, such as a clogged filter cartridge, an impeller tied up in hair algae or crack in an intake tube.
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