Prime and Ammonia

[Flashgordon]

Hi Yew, thanks for your response. If that's the case, how can we test for active ammonia if the test kit will pick up all traces of ammonia?

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Seachem sell a little disk which sits in the fish tank called Ammonia Alert. When you use Prime it converts the ammonia from harmful to harmless, but all other tests kits do not differentiate and report on both. This is the only ammonia tester which does not register the "good ammonia" only the bad stuff.

[midnightexpress]

hope this help from seachem web page

Prime™ Support

Q: I am using Prime™ to control ammonia but my test kit says it is not doing anything, in fact it looks like it added ammonia! What is going on?

A: A Nessler based kit will not read ammonia properly if you are using Prime™... it will look "off scale", sort of a muddy brown (incidentally a Nessler kit will not work with any other products similar to Prime™). A salicylate based kit can be used, but with caution. Under the conditions of a salicylate kit the ammonia-Prime complex will be broken down eventually giving a false reading of ammonia (same as with other products like Prime™), so the key with a salicylate kit is to take the reading right away. However, the best solution ;-) is to use our MultiTest: Ammonia™ kit... it uses a gas exchange sensor system which is not affected by the presence of Prime™ or other similar products. It also has the added advantage that it can detect the more dangerous free ammonia and distinguish it from total ammonia (which is both the free and ionized forms of ammonia (the ionized form is not toxic)).

Q:I tested my tap water after using Prime and came up with an ammonia reading. Is this because of chloramine? Could you explain how this works in removing chloramine?

A: Prime works by removing chlorine from the water and then binds with ammonia until it can be consumed by your biological filtration (chloramine minus chlorine = ammonia). The bond is not reversible and ammonia is still available for your bacteria to consume. Prime will not halt your cycling process.

I am going to assume that you were using a liquid based reagent test kit (Nessler based, silica). Any type of reducing agent or ammonia binder (dechlorinators, etc) will give you a false positive. You can avoid this by using our Multitest Ammonia kit (not affected by reducing agents) or you can wait to test, Prime dissipates from your system within 24 hours.

what you can do with little reserch

[Matthew]

G'day Alan

Are you using Zelbrite?

If so can you please provide some info on the setup you are using.

PS. What about the chloramine? Is this also removed?

Thanks very much

Matthew

[Matthew]

G'day

I was thinking about the amonia and chloramine conversion recently.

Logically if you add some prime (Or SAFE in my case) to a barrel of water. Give it a stir and then add it to your aquarium(s).

Wouldn't the prime also act on the ammonia and nitrite levels of your aquarium? (Does prime work on raised levels of Nitrite as well?)

My concerns are for the bacteria.

If all of the ammonia is no longer ammonia (and/or nitrite) then the bacteria has nothing to feed on.

Can this be causing problems with the water stability/chemical fluctuations?

Thanks

Matthew...