What ppm am I looking for of ammonia before I can start my filtration and remove the decaying jumbo shrimp? I?m at .50 ammonia with 3 jumbo shrimp in the system for 5 days now.
When I was using pure ammonia to cycle my tank I raised it to 2ppm. It took about 3 weeks to have it go from 2ppm to 0ppm in 24 hours. Tank was fully cycled a few days later. I did cheat and add some IO Bio-Spira to speed up the process.
The higher the level of ammonia the more time you'll need for the bacteria, which converts ammonia into nitrites, to grow and convert it. In turn the higher the level of ammonia that you start with the more bacteria that you will have in the tank once it's cycled, which in turn will be able to handle a big load from the beginning.
So if you're starting from scratch you want to build up the ammonia, which even though it will take longer to cycle the tank it will give you more bacteria so once you start adding livestock it will be able to handle it and you wouldn't go through mini-cycles.
I would take the shrimp out now, as once you see your ammonia raising they have done their job, though you may want to add a some ammonia to build it up more. Don't turn on the skimmer, add any type of carbon, or do a water change. Basically just have good water movement in the tank and let the bacteria build up. Once the bacteria builds up you will start to see the ammonia levels drop and the nitrites build up, which will eventually drop leaving you with just nitrates. At that point you can do a water change to bring them down.
Since you used dry rock you shouldn't have much die off from the rock to worry about running the skimmer now.