Does Prime actually "Detoxify" free ammonia, NH3?

[taricha]

SO there are 3 possibilities - all of the science in the article is wrong, or something in your methods is wrong - or both are wrong (meaning you could be right).

I haven't looked at all of the papers. I'm guessing a lot of them don't quite demonstrate what they are presumed to in that article.
Like how the ClorAm-X patent didn't actually demonstrate the product protected fish (saltwater or freshwater) better than a normal dechlorinator for tap water, or better than nothing for just ammonia.

Also many researchers seemed to be unaware that a dechlorinator interferes with an ammonia test that uses chlorine (salycilate method).

Or maybe some or all of the reactions work just fine in freshwater.
I have no firm position on that.

 

[MnFish1]

I haven't looked at all of the papers. I'm guessing a lot of them don't quite demonstrate what they are presumed to in that article.
Like how the ClorAm-X patent didn't actually demonstrate the product protected fish (saltwater or freshwater) better than a normal dechlorinator for tap water, or better than nothing for just ammonia.

Also many researchers seemed to be unaware that a dechlorinator interferes with an ammonia test that uses chlorine (salycilate method).

Or maybe some or all of the reactions work just fine in freshwater.
I have no firm position on that.

as I think I posted earlier - much of the 'data' here - is from freshwater. There are many more variables in SW

 

[merkmerk73]

Can we get a TL;DR at the top of the thread?

I had a hard time understanding if the conclusion of this thread is that Seachem is lying through their butt and their product does nothing to detoxify ammonia.

 

[gbroadbridge]

Can we get a TL;DR at the top of the thread?

I had a hard time understanding if the conclusion of this thread is that Seachem is lying through their butt and their product does nothing to detoxify ammonia.

In a nutshell.

 

[Malcontent]

Not just Seachem's products--it appears that all water conditioners are just dechlorinators...

 

[merkmerk73]

Sounds like a lawsuit

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I'll simplify it - There is data - that suggests that Prime and other products do not reduce ammonia. I'm not at all convinced about their sensitivity or sensitivity to make those conclusions. Perhaps they are right - perhaps they are incorrect - But - you're kind of dancing around my point - that no in-vivo studies have been done on this forum. There are multiple people (uncontrolled) - who CLAIM to have moribund fish come around quickly after adding Prime et al. Could those be coincidence? Are there others with moribund fish who have added prime with no effect - probably. I don't know. Is Seachem somewhat inconsistent - yes. Has seachem claimed to do in vivo testing yes they have (in a private discussion). The patent literature also suggests that it's possible. So - I'm not sure why you think I'm scrambling. I'm agreeing with your basic premise lol. I said the results here suggest that Prime does not 'remove' free ammonia.

I agree that there is no in vivo data anywhere that indicates that it works or doesn’t work. I believe specifically discussed that earlier in this thread, and how one might test it.

The only data available, which has been done many times by many people, even before this thread and the associated testing arose, shows that testing, even using the exact devices recommended by Seachem, does not support what Seachem claims.

Couple that with their demonstrated tendency to intentionally mislead users on ingredients and to clearly not understand the chemistry of some of their own products, makes me not inclined to believe their other unsupported claims.

 

[taricha]

Can we get a TL;DR at the top of the thread?

I had a hard time understanding if the conclusion of this thread is that Seachem is lying

I think this is a joke, maybe.
That's pretty much been the theme of every page from my first post to this page now over a year later.

And @Dan_P provided measurements of much higher quality in his thread than what I did here.

No sensing film detected a statistically significant removal of ammonia either at 0.5 or 2.0 ppm total ammonia 2 hours after adding Prime to the ammonia solution. The graph below shows data for the calibration of the Seneye ammonia sensor (X’s indicate the addition of 0.12 ppm total ammonia). After the last ammonia addition, the slide was allowed to recover. During this recovery period, ten times the recommended amount of Prime was added to the ammonia solution and allowed to react two hours. The recovered Seneye slide was then placed into the reacted ammonia+Prime solution. The orange circle is the response of the ammonia sensing film to the Prime+ammonia solution, indicating no change to the final ammonia concentration.

This is just one of dozens of experiments where I measured no ammonia removal. At no time was there an indication that Prime removes ammonia. I also looked at another water conditioner, Cloramx, which also claims to remove ammonia and it too failed to show any ammonia removal capability, even at thirty eight times the recommended dose. I am beginning to wonder about the credibility of all water conditioners that claim to remove ammonia.

Not just Seachem's products--it appears that all water conditioners are just dechlorinators..

I'd say that Some products have been looked at a bunch - Prime, ChlorAm-X, and some barely at all (Ammo-Lock) but all of them gave the same results.
Total Ammonia chemical tests are interfered with, and shouldn't be used. and NH3 gas sensing films that ought to show lowered NH3, show no clear decrease in ammonia.

If any of them do remove ammonia, it seems totally unverifiable.
(If there's a good ammonia-removal product I've missed, please share.)

But nitrifiers, Algae, water changes, carbon dosing etc all remove ammonia in clear, guaranteed, verifiable ways.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I think this is a joke, maybe.
That's pretty much been the theme of every page from my first post to this page now over a year later.

And @Dan_P provided measurements of much higher quality in his thread than what I did here.





I'd say that Some products have been looked at a bunch - Prime, ChlorAm-X, and some barely at all (Ammo-Lock) but all of them gave the same results.
Total Ammonia chemical tests are interfered with, and shouldn't be used. and NH3 gas sensing films that ought to show lowered NH3, show no clear decrease in ammonia.

If any of them do remove ammonia, it seems totally unverifiable.
(If there's a good ammonia-removal product I've missed, please share.)

But nitrifiers, Algae, water changes, carbon dosing etc all remove ammonia in clear, guaranteed, verifiable ways.

Good may be a relative term, but clinoptillolite can remove ammonia by binding it into pores of the zeolite. The capacity in seawater is very low relative to freshwater.

 

[taricha]

I agree that there is no in vivo data anywhere that indicates that it works or doesn’t work. I believe specifically discussed that earlier in this thread, and how one might test it.

There were the amphipods - which were subjected to ammonia with or without prime. Prime was added at 1x recommended dose for each 1 ppm total ammonia.
final amounts were 12x ppm total ammonia and 16x prime.
The amphipods exposed to the ammonia died equally fast with or without Prime.

Some found it persuasive, others argued for pages that we should pretend the experiment wasn't done at all.

I now have some results of the amphipod test that I discussed the setup for in this post:



First column is the time in hours, the next 4 columns are the 4 treatments - Tank water with or without ammonia and with or without Prime, second to last column is the ammonia level at that time, last column is when and how much Prime was added.

Time (hours)	Status of Amphipods				Ammonia level	Prime added
	1 - Tank Water	2 - TW+Amm	3 - TW+Amm+Prime	4 - TW+Prime
0	2 swimming	2 swimming	2 swimming	2 swimming	0.55ppm NH3, 4ppm NH3+4.	+4x Prime
6	2 swimming	2 swimming	2 swimming	2 swimming	1.6ppm NH3, 12ppm NH3+4.	+12x Prime (16x total)
7	2 swimming	2 alive, not swimming	2 alive, not swimmming	2 swimming
13	2 swimming	1 alive not swimming, 1 dead	2 alive, not swimmming	2 swimming
20	2 swimming	1 alive not swimming, 1 dead	2 dead	2 swimming
22	2 swimming	2 dead	2 dead	2 swimming

The clearly toxic effects began within an hour of moving to the second level of ammonia, so I did not go any higher.
The ammonia was clearly toxic with or without Prime added at 12x (for 12ppm ammonia). There was no detectable difference in the color of the seachem disks, or the time when the amphipods could no longer swim, or any significant difference in the time when they were dead.
In the treatments with ammonia, without Prime the two amphipods were dead at 13 and 22 hours. With Prime the amphipods were both dead at 20 hours.

The amphipods not exposed to ammonia (with or without Prime) were able to swim throughout the process and were fed to a grateful yellow watchman goby at the conclusion.

Pics at the conclusion of experiment.

(Seachem NH3 detecting disks Left to right: bottle 1- Tank Water, 2 TW + ammonia, 3 TW + ammonia + Prime, 4 TW + prime)

(left to right: bottle 1- Tank Water - swimming, 2 TW + ammonia - dead, 3 TW + ammonia + Prime - dead, 4 TW + prime - swimming)

Could the experiment be made more applicable and convincing with sensitive fish and a lower ammonia level? sure, but I have zero interest in doing that since it's clear to me that Prime doesn't detoxify ammonia and it would just end with dead fish.

Sure, it would be more persuasive at lower total ammonia levels and done on fish, but nobody is likely to do so, since nobody seems confident that the product(s) would actually protect the fish from toxic ammonia in a pH-controlled test.

 

[taricha]

Good may be a relative term, but clinoptillolite can remove ammonia by binding it into pores of the zeolite. The capacity in seawater is very low relative to freshwater.

True. zeolites can remove ammonia. Not one of the products I doubt.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

There were the amphipods - which were subjected to ammonia with or without prime. Prime was added at 1x recommended dose for each 1 ppm total ammonia.
final amounts were 12x ppm total ammonia and 16x prime.
The amphipods exposed to the ammonia died equally fast with or without Prime.

Some found it persuasive, others argued for pages that we should pretend the experiment wasn't done at all.

Thanks for the reminder. Been a long thread.

Does Prime actually "Detoxify" free ammonia, NH3?

Amphipod test.... Amphipods are tough cookies. benthic organisms have a high ammonia tolerance. marine amphipods have been found to have a lethal concentration of ammonia (to 50% of specimens) at 96 hours of anywhere from 0.83 to 3.39 mg/L of free ammonia, NH3 (not total ammonia). 4...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[MnFish1]

There were the amphipods - which were subjected to ammonia with or without prime. Prime was added at 1x recommended dose for each 1 ppm total ammonia.
final amounts were 12x ppm total ammonia and 16x prime.
The amphipods exposed to the ammonia died equally fast with or without Prime.

Some found it persuasive, others argued for pages that we should pretend the experiment wasn't done at all.




Sure, it would be more persuasive at lower total ammonia levels and done on fish, but nobody is likely to do so, since nobody seems confident that the product(s) would actually protect the fish from toxic ammonia in a pH-controlled test.

There were multiple problems with the amphipod experiment - and you know what they were. Having said that - you're correct the experiment did not show any detoxifying effect. The reason that no one has done experiments with fish AFAIK is that there are ethical issues exposing a control group to ammonia as compared to a 'fear' that it wouldn't work. There is also a groundswell not only on this forum but many other areas which ethically suggest that any experiments with vertebrates should be eliminated. After a verbal communication with Seachem many months ago - they stated that in vivo experiments have been done. As Randy would say - Im not sure those experiments have been published anywhere.

 

[MnFish1]

Can we get a TL;DR at the top of the thread?

I had a hard time understanding if the conclusion of this thread is that Seachem is lying through their butt and their product does nothing to detoxify ammonia.

I think the answer is that based on the testing done - it does not appear that Prime lowers free ammonia using the methods tested. There have not been any experiments done with 'living things' at amounts of ammonia found in a normal reef tank that is cycling, etc - to suggest that Prime does not detoxify ammonia (nor that it does).

 

[Dan_P]

SO there are 3 possibilities - all of the science in the article is wrong, or something in your methods is wrong - or both are wrong (meaning you could be right).

There are probably more possibilities, for example, the author might not be technically competent. Anyone can test this idea.

Read what the author says and then read the reference linked in the article. The few that I did read indicates that the author does not understand chemistry and did not read the abstract, though if the chemistry knowledge is lacking, reading the abstract might not help much.

What I am saying is that once you remove the tangential and irrelevant technically sound information, the article provides us with no evidence that Prime can reduce the concentration of free ammonia.

 

[merkmerk73]

Anecdotally I was reading .8 ppm ammonia during some kind of freak ammonia spike yesterday, 3 separate readings confirmed across 2 different test kits

Dosed 2x seachem prime and today it was .2ppm.

I guess it's possible that it was a freak spike that I somehow managed to catch and it naturally came down due to nitrifying bacteria.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Anecdotally I was reading .8 ppm ammonia during some kind of freak ammonia spike yesterday, 3 separate readings confirmed across 2 different test kits

Dosed 2x seachem prime and today it was .2ppm.

I guess it's possible that it was a freak spike that I somehow managed to catch and it naturally came down due to nitrifying bacteria.

Which test kits? What color did the sample turn in them?

 

[brandon429]

@merkmerk73



if this was a display reef: those spikes didn’t happen. Display reefs don’t climb to tenths ppm nh4 after a cycle, can you post pics of the display reef that claimed such a spike without any fish death + rotting in the tank as the causative, we collect those pics + non digital test kit misreads in certain threads

 

[taricha]

Anecdotally I was reading .8 ppm ammonia during some kind of freak ammonia spike yesterday, 3 separate readings confirmed across 2 different test kits

Dosed 2x seachem prime and today it was .2ppm.

I guess it's possible that it was a freak spike that I somehow managed to catch and it naturally came down due to nitrifying bacteria.

fortunately there are many things in a tank system that can remove ammonia.
Nitrifiers, heterotroph bacteria, algae, coral, etc.
(Prime does not seem to be one of them.)

 

[Dan_P]

Anecdotally I was reading .8 ppm ammonia during some kind of freak ammonia spike yesterday, 3 separate readings confirmed across 2 different test kits

Dosed 2x seachem prime and today it was .2ppm.

I guess it's possible that it was a freak spike that I somehow managed to catch and it naturally came down due to nitrifying bacteria.

Prime, or any dechlorinator, interferes with the salicylate ammonia test method by neutralizing the chlorine in the test reagent. So, we cannot be sure that the ammonia came down. The way around this is to use ammonia sensing films that are placed in the aquarium.

Nitrifying bacteria can reproduce pretty quickly. A twenty four reduction as you describe would as you describe would not surprise me.

By the way, what prompted you to test for ammonia?