Another toxin in my water supply...?

[abundantdreamer]

I purchased a young betta a week ago. I brought him home and changed his water using half bottled water and half tap with water conditioner to eliminate chlorine. He got kinda sluggish and did not look good for the first two days. Then he perked up, started eating and paying attention to me. I was treating him for fin rot with a bit of salt as well. He was doing sooo much better.
After about four days I did a full water change, kept it to temperature and added water conditioner. However, I used only water from the tap - no bottled water this time. The next day, after a few hours of heavy breathing and disorientation, he sadly died :( I feel awful.
I want to be sure this doesn't happen again. I purchased a fluval spec so I can cycle the water. But if my tap water is bad...what should I do? It smelled like metal and chemicals...not good. Would a test kit help? If so, which tests should I buy? Thank you so so much for the help.

[LebronTheBetta]

It seems like there's ammonia in your tap water, a test kit will solve that for sure. I'm sorry he died. :( What size is your tank? Cycling will take around a month to complete so I suggest for you to read the stickies about them. Try to call your water company, and list down the things they add in.

[abundantdreamer]

That's a great suggestion - I will call them. I had read about ammonia poisoning but didn't think it would be in straight tap water...or thought the conditioner would take care of it...I'll know better this go around.
I got the spec two gallon because I don't have much space at the present time. My only other thought is, are there additives that neutralize ammonia? Because I will be doing weekly water changes to the tank.

[sainthogan]

My tap water has a level of .25 ammonia. I use the API test kit - it's the kind you mix the water you are testing with a solution. It's very informative. If you do have high ammonia, you can get conditioner with things that will reduce the ammonia, of if that doesn't work - they have a special tablet or powder or something you can add to lower the ammonia.
Sorry about your little guy :(

[LebronTheBetta]

Well, there is chlorine, chloramines, and metals in tap water. The chloramines are there to bind ammonia, so it's safe for you to drink. BUT, water conditioner removes all of these, which means if there is ammonia that got binded, the bind will be removed and then voila there is ammonia ready for your fish. It's better to not add additives as this would make the situation worse. There is a conditioner called Prime by Seachem that neutralizes it for 48 hours, but not 24/7. Just try to test your water, call the company, and we'll teach you cycling later on.

[abundantdreamer]

Thanks sainthogan. He was a sweet little guy~ I'll get the API test. Now that I'm tapped into everyone's collective experience, this shouldn't happen again.
Thanks for the great advice LebronTheBetta. I'll be sure to check back in soon with an update.

[LebronTheBetta]

No problem, I hope you'll get an answer soon for all of this.

[paloverde]

So sorry for your loss. I also use a combo of bottled ( r.o.) water and tap water,1 part bottled to 2 parts conditioned tap due to the water in this city is extremely hard. The problem when using bottled water without buffering it with hard tap water is that the ph can crash...not a good thing. P.h. is logarithmic, so while it might seem that a drop/rise of say from 7.0 to7.2 or 7.0 to 6.8 is not such a big deal it is actually a huge difference. Fish need to be acclimated very, very slowly to not shock them. Your city will have water quality reports by access via internet