How long do I add ammonia?

Once you have a spike in nitrites... add enough ammonia each day to keep it at 2-3 ppm. Once you get a reading of 0 ppm ammonia and 0 ppm nitrites within 24 hours of adding ammonia to the tank... you're ready to go... just be sure to do a massive water change before adding your fish because your nitrates will be sky high!!

What must the nitrite be in order to consider it a spike?

one day you will have 0 ppm nitrite and the next you will have a bunch of nitrites... that is the nitrite spike.

so nitrite spikes happen in like one day then?

Well... it did for me at least...

Have you been measuring nitrites all along?

well my nitrite spiked to 1ppm today. is that a spike?

It depends...

have you been checking for nitrites all along...

regardless it is safe to drop your ammonia addition to 2-3ppm if you are getting any nitrite reading...

Check daily and keep ammonia at 2-3 ppm and make sure to keep checking nitrites... once you have zero nitrites you are ready for the massive water change and addition of fish...

When you do you readings is the ammonia from the previous day being totally broken down to 0 ppm?

There is still ammonia left in the water from the previous days

You also may want to test your tap water to see if anything is present in it.

And if you haven't already you should definitely go to the library section of this site... go to the Water Chemistry heading and read both the article on the nitrogen cycle and on fishless cycling.

sounds like good advice to me. I'm gonna be going down the fishless cycle road shortly.