Not sure if you're trolling, OP, but in case you're not: Have you tried using actual ammonia (like the one here from the evil overlord amazon) instead of fish flakes? Also, here is a good guide for a fishless cycle. I've followed this one for all 4 of my tanks and it worked well.

You have lots of options with 36 gallons, which is nice.

Ammonia is sold as a common household cleaner, probably located near bleach in the cleaning aisle. It's maybe $2 a bottle and is commonly found in grocery stores, dollar stores, and hardware stores. Just be careful which kind you buy, as mentioned. That's in the US, anyway. Some countries don't sell it for household use. You might find it online but it'll cost you a lot more. Rather than doing that, if you can't find it locally you might buy ammonium chloride to achieve the same results. The liquid is easy and cheap though, so I'd look for that first. You can change the water, cleaning the substrate, to get the foulness from the fish food out now if it's bothering you. You'd have to do it anyway before stocking so your call now or later.

There's some good beginner's info here if you're interested. An overview of the nitrogen cycle (discussing ammonia's role) is here.

What ammonia source are you using to cycle, fish food? You should be using ammonium chloride, so you can accurately dose to 2ppm ammonia! Dr. Tim’s ammonia is the most recommended one, since it’s the easiest to dose! Here’s another link for Fritz ammonia powder just for example! Cycling with fish food (sorry I’m making assumptions here) is not an accurate way to cycle! It’s inefficient and super messy. Here is an excellent Cycling Guide for you as well! Hope this helped! :)