Yes, you have got your priorities absolutely right. Its hard sometimes convincing people of that. Its just another example of how everything can be frustrating about fish-in cycles. The fishless people have all the fun of seeing dramatic evidence that their cycle is progressing (they see the ammonia drop in faster times, they see the big nitrite spike etc.) With fish-in, you see little hints but most of the dramatic evidence is washed away by your frequent water changes. But of course you have no choice because almost everything else in unimportant compared to keeping ammonia and nitrite below 0.25ppm. (You will see threads where beginners come in and sing the praises of fish-in method and seem happy that their nitrite is only showing .3 or such, but they are ignoring the reality that their fish are suffering permanent gill damage as this situation proceeds.)
Remind us of what "Day" your fish-in cycle is on (it is very handy if Day1,Day2 etc. appears next to date,time in the beginners log.) It seems to average about 4 full weeks for a fish-in cycle, given reasonable pH and carbonate hardness.
~~waterdrop~~