Strapi EADDRNOTAVAIL error while deploying on Dokku - mongodb

Question

I am trying to deploy Strapi on a Dokku instance on a Digital Ocean droplet. I originally ran into some issues connecting to the mongo database, but after some trial and error and a lot of review of these docs and this issue, I was able to get it to stop complaining about the mongo connection. Here was my final config/environments/production/database.json
{
"defaultConnection": "default",
"connections": {
"default": {
"connector": "mongoose",
"settings": {
"client": "mongo",
"uri": "${process.env.MONGO_URL}",
"database": "${process.env.DATABASE_NAME}",
"username": "${process.env.DATABASE_USERNAME}",
"password": "${process.env.DATABASE_PASSWORD}",
"port": "${process.env.DATABASE_PORT || 27017}"
},
"options": {
"authenticationDatabase": "${process.env.DATABASE_AUTHENTICATION_DATABASE || ''}",
"useUnifiedTopology": "${process.env.USE_UNIFIED_TOPOLOGY || false}",
"ssl": "${process.env.DATABASE_SSL || false}"
}
}
}
}
Here is my config/environments/production/server.json
{
"host": "${process.env.HOST || '0.0.0.0'}",
"port": "${process.env.PORT || 1337}",
"production": true,
"proxy": {
"enabled": false
},
"cron": {
"enabled": false
},
"admin": {
"autoOpen": false
}
}
I believe the original issue was that I was accidentally using the PORT variable for the database instead of the DATABASE_PORT variable.
However, now that I have that worked out I am getting this error:
error Error: listen EADDRNOTAVAIL: address not available <my-host-ip>:5000
I thought maybe there was some wrong port being cached somewhere, but regardless of what I do, I can't seem to get it to work. Do I need to enable ssl? and then add a letsencrypt cert to my domain? am i using the wrong ports? set a proxy in the server.json?
PS. I am using Dokku Mongo. Didn't think that would be an issue considering the dynos don't go to sleep like they would on heroku. Is that an incorrect assumption?
Also, there are other apps running on the droplet. Maybe a proxy problem?