My last few Convict Cichlids died a few months ago. They would have been 8 years old this month.
OP: Try to not use ammonia removers. For one thing, it's likely to kill your fish itself. Do water changes over a period of time to remove ammonia. And if ammonia is in your tap water, go get some RO water from a self serve dispenser that some grocery stores have (publix, super wal mart, health food/produce type grocery stores). You MUST treat your tap water before adding it to the tank, especially with as much as you changed.
Possibly what your water company is doing is adding Chloramine, which is a combination of chlorine and ammonia. And they have to add a lot of it to be effective. Chloramine doesn't dissipate in the air much like chlorine does. So just letting your tap water sit out for awhile before adding might not be good. Also don't do large water changes. Keep it at about 10%-20%, the lower the better, just do it more often.
The water you add to the tank (if you have fish in it) needs to be almost the exact same temp. as the tank water. A couple degrees difference or so won't hurt, unless the fish are already sick/stressed.
If the cup you used was washed with soap, it still has a little bit soap in it even if you rinced it out.
Don't stick your bare hands in the tank. They have oil, soap, cologne, food, and all kinds of stuff that aren't good for the fish. Buy some of the thick gloves made for salt water fish keepers.
All this stuff may sound picky, but it's required if you want to have fish that are healthy and live long.
How long were your fish in the thank before changing? It takes awhile for a bio filter to build up with needed bacteria to do it's job. If it's not, you'll have ammonia and/or nitrite in the tank.
And if the Ammo Lock you used is by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals, AP products generally are not good, nor are Jungle's. You need something to remove Chlorine any time you do a water change. I recommend NovAqua by Kordon. It removes Chloramine too. If you insist on an ammonia remover, I'd use Kordon's AmQuel. Activated carbon should remove your chloramine and ammonia as well (and probably remove some of the ammonia remover!). Also if your pH is lower, the ammonia is less toxic. But as a beginner, if you trying to adjust your pH, you'll probably kill your fish.
Adding Distulited water would not change PH values since by definition pure water does not affect a solution's PH no matter how much of the distillated water you add.
I don't know what Distulited water is, but distilled water can most certainly change pH. Distilled water has basically no kH - carbonate hardness (temporary hardness). kH is the buffering capacity, so with distilled water in the tank, the pH can easily be changed. Thats one way fish keepers change their pH (ie. for fish breeding), by adding distilled water. gH - general hardness (soft/hard) is what doesn't usually affect pH.
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