Ruby's condition

My betta tank is still stuck in cycle, nitrites are not dropping.

Every time I cycle a tank, this happens, it takes forever for the nitrite stage to finish. I'm feeling terrible for Ruby, but there's nothing I can do but keep up the water changes (which stalls the cycle longer, I'm sure) because I simply have no other place to put him. Any other container I'd use, wouldn't be cycled either. I've dropped in more malaysian trumpet snails from the other tanks, I brought in new nerite snails, I'm feeding them as Ruby hardly eats.

He's definitely lethargic and I'm starting to wonder if he's starting to get popeye. I have replacement sponges coming for Laddie's tank soon- I'm going to swap out one new for old, cut the old in half, drop one piece in here, the other in my QT that's also stuck in cycle. Hope that gives them a boost.

Added some pieces of rotala colorata stem someone gave me, in this corner the other day: