Test levels thus far: and yep we got one of them fancy pants liquid tester things and read the directions even!
Ph: level is an
8, which is "high-ish but not deadly" to balas, which prefer 6-7.8
Ammonia: yeah, oh crap, San Diego water got ammonia added to the water within the last year. Our tapwater was a .25-.50 ish range, closer to .25. Our ammonia in the TANK itself was
between .5 and 1, although we believe it's closer to 1, like a .8 or so. From what I understand, ANY ammonia is like, uh oh, we gonna DIE!!!

I checked online about that ammonia and they said that adding lots of fish can make it spike...not sure about that. but we added like, 7 the first time, then 1 died, then added 6 (like 2 days later? 1 day?) and another died (same species, died before we picked up the 6), and then donated 3 total to a local "fishery" or whatever the PC term is. So maybe adding/subtracting fish may do that?? any thoughts would be appreciated. So the "book" which came with the test kit is saying to do a 25% water change, but since our water is already .25-.50 ammonia, what should I do? and just added a little driftwood (Malaysian, let it soak a few days and rinse repeat as necessary) could that add ammonia or be affected by ammonia?
Nitrites: Just checked the Nitrites at 10:12 PM PST : and Woot Woot the nitrate level is less than the lowest level, and it's
0!!! YAY!!!!!!!
Nitrate: test seems a little long winded, but the result so far is like, way below 40, more like 5 or 10, so far that is...
2.5 pretty much, right between 0 and 5, so yay for yellow !
Hardness: well it's common knowledge that the water
is hard, supposedly the driftwood might help the hardness of the water to calm down a little.
Thus far the driftwood seems popular for the fish to hide behind, the sucker to suck, and the bala to hide in, so that's good, i hope, and I'd like help on how to get rid of ammonia poisoning, will distilled water hurt the fish even more than they already are? i mean, atleast it doesn't have any ammonia in it...as well the test kit book mentioned Ammolock to use to keep down ammonia and I've read around the forums that some people have used it for a Fish cycling. But I never heard how it ended out just that they used it never heard of a end result any help would be greatful thanks!!!