Good afternoon y'all in the gfish society called Koko's Goldfish world.
I thought I should share this with you guys, In my area which is the peninsula
of the SF bay area, they are no longer adding chlorine to the water they are adding what is called chlorinine (spelling) which does not evaporate from the water
so we are forced to use water treating chemicals. Just thought I bring this up.
Peace.

Everyone is having problems with the conversion, including myself.

Every aquarium store I visited people are expressing concerns about decline of their fish's health dispite treating their water for the chloramine.

I had pH crashes you wouldn't believe. Measured off the scale at 6.0 pH in less than 24 hrs. Changed water every day just to try and keep it at 6.8. When I had to change water twice a day to maintain the pH at a safe fixed level I knew something was terribly wrong.

I was using Amquel to treat the water. The more I put in the worst the problem became. It was like a vicious cycle. The ammonia level started to creep up too.

The guys at Nippon Goldfish in San Francisco said stop using the Amquel. They didn't go as far as to say Amquel is bad. They just gave me that "look". "Use Prime instead and buffer 'up' your water."

I did just that and the problem was solved. For the symptom of the problem at least.

After Koko and Happy suggested I test my water hardness, I went and got a GH/KH test kit. Then I found the real cause of the problem.

The problem I found was that the water is also very soft. The GH and KH out of my tap measure less than 20 mg/L GH and KH around 30 mg/L. For normal water hardness GH needs to be above 60 and KH needs to be 20 to 80. KH above 80 is considered excellent buffer capacity for freshwater.

For those of you who don't already know, KH is important for the nitrification bacteria to do it's job. If you find yourself having a hard time maintaining 0ppm Ammonia in a cycled tank, try checking your KH. In addition, the nitrification bacteria cease to function at a pH below 6.5.

And by the way, don't change pH by more than 0.2 pH per 24 hour period. Fish don't like fluctuating pH. Goldfish can tolerate wide range in pH, but not drastic changes in pH, ie: pH crashes.

I learned proper water hardness is important to the general health of fish. Is there such a thing as water being too hard? Besides having to use more detergent to clean your laundry and make worst your bathroom cleaning chores, I really don't know. Maybe someone on this site can better answer this question.

For you aquarist who live in an area with hard water, consider yourselves blessed.