Prime Does Not Remove Ammonia

[Bucs20fan]

@MnFish1 pH was between 8.1 and 8.3 Im not saying anything is correct about what prime claims to do. It very well maybe another case of Vibrant. But What I do know is that it has undoubtedly helped me over the years in both fresh and salt to deal with ammonia in a pinch. I am curious to see if prime has a sort of mythical ammonia attribute that isnt quite as advertised.

 

[MnFish1]

@MnFish1 pH was between 8.1 and 8.3 Im not saying anything is correct about what prime claims to do. It very well maybe another case of Vibrant. But What I do know is that it has undoubtedly helped me over the years in both fresh and salt to deal with ammonia in a pinch. I am curious to see if prime has a sort of mythical ammonia attribute that isnt quite as advertised.

Right - that was the purpose of this thread. Chemically using the methods tested suggests no change in free ammonia levels - which supposedly should decrease with Prime. My comment has been that an in-vivo study would be important - and its been discussed by several people - but there are ethical issues.

 

[tharbin]

I probably should stay out of this thread as I have no scientific background but as a total spitball...

What I don't see here, because of the ethical concerns raised, is that is it possible that Prime does not bind the free ammonia in the water column but rather in some way interferes with the absorption of the free ammonia by the gill plates? Sorry if this is overly naïve and simplistic but it just seems that the tests are about whether or not Prime is detoxifying the water, based on their own claims, when what really matters is does the ammonia get absorbed by the gill plates.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I probably should stay out of this thread as I have no scientific background but as a total spitball...

What I don't see here, because of the ethical concerns raised, is that is it possible that Prime does not bind the free ammonia in the water column but rather in some way interferes with the absorption of the free ammonia by the gill plates? Sorry if this is overly naïve and simplistic but it just seems that the tests are about whether or not Prime is detoxifying the water, based on their own claims, when what really matters is does the ammonia get absorbed by the gill plates.

That's possible, but extraordinarily unlikely. NH3 is passively taken up across membranes, not by active transport that could be inhibited.

Curiously, there is NO published data anywhere (at least that we have found) demonstrating that Prime actually works to reduce toxicity of ammonia, nitrite or nitrate.

Such a mechanism would also make Seachem liars for claiming what they do. They do not just claim reduced toxicity, they explicitly state how it does so.

Seachem has a very low threshold for making claims that something works.

They claim it detoxifies nitrate, but when you read carefully they say they do not know how tha tmight happen, but some users report it.

OMG, good enough for me! By all means claim:

" It contains a binder which renders ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate non-toxic,"

without ANY supporting data or understanding at all.

Seachem - Prime

www.seachem.com

"I wish we had some more "concrete" explanation, but the end result is the same, it does actually detoxify nitrite and nitrate. This was unexpected chemically and thus initially we were not even aware of this, however we received numerous reports from customers stating that when they overdosed with Prime® they were able to reduce or eliminate the high death rates they experienced when their nitrite and nitrate levels were high. We have received enough reports to date to ensure that this is no fluke and is in fact a verifiable function of the product."

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

But What I do know is that it has undoubtedly helped me over the years in both fresh and salt to deal with ammonia in a pinch. I am curious to see if prime has a sort of mythical ammonia attribute that isnt quite as advertised.

Because fish did not die?

How do you know they would have died?

It is almost never an acceptable scientific method to only treat an animal or human, see they didn't die, and claim an effect. One must not treat other animals or humans in identical settings and see they did die.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Everyone and their dog has an ammonia/nitrite/nitrate detoxifier these days:

*Ignore that extra Seachem Prime entry.

The new kid on the block is API Aqua Essential.

I have a nitrate and nitrite detoxifier that I guarantee works.

It's called take two aspirin and call me in the morning. lol

Neither are toxic enough to ever see an immediate lethal effect on marine fish at any levels reefers attain (at least not that could possibly be impacted by normal to somewhat overdosed prime.

10,000 ppm nitrate? Possibly lethal to many fish. Could Prime help that? Obviously not since it cannot possibly bind that much nitrate (or nitrite).

 

[tharbin]

That's possible, but extraordinarily unlikely. NH3 is passively taken up across membranes, not by active transport that could be inhibited.

Curiously, there is NO published data anywhere (at least that we have found) demonstrating that Prime actually works to reduce toxicity of ammonia, nitrite or nitrate.

Such a mechanism would also make Seachem liars for claiming what they do. They do not just claim reduced toxicity, they explicitly state how it does so.

Seachem has a very low threshold for making claims that something works.

They claim it detoxifies nitrate, but when you read carefully they say they do not know how tha tmight happen, but some users report it.

OMG, good enough for me! By all means claim:

" It contains a binder which renders ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate non-toxic,"

without ANY supporting data or understanding at all.

Seachem - Prime

www.seachem.com

"I wish we had some more "concrete" explanation, but the end result is the same, it does actually detoxify nitrite and nitrate. This was unexpected chemically and thus initially we were not even aware of this, however we received numerous reports from customers stating that when they overdosed with Prime® they were able to reduce or eliminate the high death rates they experienced when their nitrite and nitrate levels were high. We have received enough reports to date to ensure that this is no fluke and is in fact a verifiable function of the product."

Thank you Randy. Your response even made sense to me. I've never used Prime but I think it is important that we separate the 'proven' products from the 'snake oil' products. Too much money gets spent on miracle cures in this hobby.

 

[Bucs20fan]

It is not certain the fish would have died. But the symptoms were from ammonia, and even if the fish wouldnt necessarily have died, prime did relieve the symptoms. Im not saying its a catch all for ammonia. And this is my non scientific opinion, prime does something to ammonia in the water column. Albeit not making it undetectable clearly, maybe it makes it harder to be absorbed through the gill plates, I have no clue. But Ive been keeping fish for almost 20 year now and Prime has always helped in an ammonia issue if a water change was not practical at the time. I completely agree with what you are saying about death and saying hey look it worked. But when prime was added, within an hour with proper flow for circulation, the symptoms of ammonia poisoning ceased. My whole point of posting here was that Maybe its not looking at if we can still detect the ammonia. I do not have the background as a chemist to refute why it does not make it undetectable. Yes the label says removes ammonia. Clearly this is not the case, but what it does do is detoxify ammonia in some fashion to the point where it can be used as an emergency treatment.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

It is not certain the fish would have died. But the symptoms were from ammonia, and even if the fish wouldnt necessarily have died, prime did relieve the symptoms. Im not saying its a catch all for ammonia. And this is my non scientific opinion, prime does something to ammonia in the water column. Albeit not making it undetectable clearly, maybe it makes it harder to be absorbed through the gill plates, I have no clue. But Ive been keeping fish for almost 20 year now and Prime has always helped in an ammonia issue if a water change was not practical at the time. I completely agree with what you are saying about death and saying hey look it worked. But when prime was added, within an hour with proper flow for circulation, the symptoms of ammonia poisoning ceased. My whole point of posting here was that Maybe its not looking at if we can still detect the ammonia. I do not have the background as a chemist to refute why it does not make it undetectable. Yes the label says removes ammonia. Clearly this is not the case, but what it does do is detoxify ammonia in some fashion to the point where it can be used as an emergency treatment.

OK, I accept that you and a great many others believe this to be true. You might be right for reasons we do not understand. Even a pH drop from Prime might have the effect you report.

 

[Malcontent]

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jai.12282

Although Amquel® helped stabilize the pH and diminish total ammonia levels in the transport water, this compound dramatically increased net Na+ and Cl− uptake, and therefore compromised cardinal tetra ionoregulation.

 

[Malcontent]

"I wish we had some more "concrete" explanation, but the end result is the same, it does actually detoxify nitrite and nitrate. This was unexpected chemically and thus initially we were not even aware of this, however we received numerous reports from customers stating that when they overdosed with Prime® they were able to reduce or eliminate the high death rates they experienced when their nitrite and nitrate levels were high. We have received enough reports to date to ensure that this is no fluke and is in fact a verifiable function of the product."

If I start spamming their support email with reports that Prime resurrected my deceased fish, would they print it on the bottle?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jai.12282

That's a different chemical, however. It's not in Prime.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

If I start spamming their support email with reports that Prime resurrected my deceased fish, would they print it on the bottle?

They might. Maybe you can get a royalty.

 

[brandon429]

There’s one thing I’m certain of @Bucs20fan

its that reefers constantly think they had free ammonia issues and then when we peel the onion, they never did. Not one time not ever unless they had a fish kill where all dead fish were left in the tank to rot.
Rising ammonia -never- preceded the fish kill in a display reef using common active surface area, the fish kill came before rising ammonia. That’s the rule.

without that one single cause, nobody had free ammonia issues in a reef tank display, I’ve got a running negotiable PayPal bounty available if someone wants to show me proof of ammonia noncontrol after cycling and that proof will need to be shown by a Hach nh3 meter or a seneye, inside a running reef tank display full of cycled rocks like everyone has when they’re making a panic move regarding free ammonia off a non digital nh4 test kit.

when you used prime to handle ammonia issues, was your tank littered in dead fish


ammonia is the #1 inherently regulated parameter in all of reefing, it’s never ever ever a cause for anything I’m finding as the years go by and the proofs compile. People have been dosing prime to systems in false ammonia distress, convincing themselves prime worked. Not using prime in those intervals also works, my logs of other peoples false ammonia concerns show. We never use prime to fix a claimed ammonia issue, we use pictures of their reef and asymptomatic fish.

 

[GARRIGA]

I'm losing hope in Prime as a means of mitigating ammonia but have a ton of the powder form so will continue using it for de-chlorination. Will likely seek cheaper alternative to just solve for that when I run out. Best to have been corrected than to continue with wrong assumptions.

 

[brandon429]

Garriga Im interested to know when you encountered ammonia issues in a reef and how that was determined

honestly seeking pattern outliers…was this in a dry rock setup where ammonia was added, and no bottle bac?

 

[Dan_P]

There’s one thing I’m certain of @Bucs20fan

its that reefers constantly think they had free ammonia issues and then when we peel the onion, they never did. Not one time not ever unless they had a fish kill where all dead fish were left in the tank to rot.
Rising ammonia -never- preceded the fish kill in a display reef using common active surface area, the fish kill came before rising ammonia. That’s the rule.

without that one single cause, nobody had free ammonia issues in a reef tank display, I’ve got a running negotiable PayPal bounty available if someone wants to show me proof of ammonia noncontrol after cycling and that proof will need to be shown by a Hach nh3 meter or a seneye, inside a running reef tank display full of cycled rocks like everyone has when they’re making a panic move regarding free ammonia off a non digital nh4 test kit.

when you used prime to handle ammonia issues, was your tank littered in dead fish


ammonia is the #1 inherently regulated parameter in all of reefing, it’s never ever ever a cause for anything I’m finding as the years go by and the proofs compile. People have been dosing prime to systems in false ammonia distress, convincing themselves prime worked. Not using prime in those intervals also works, my logs of other peoples false ammonia concerns show. We never use prime to fix a claimed ammonia issue, we use pictures of their reef and asymptomatic fish.

Yeah but…

I will go out on a limb and say no aquarium friendly molecule exists which at the recommended dose can reduce ammonia concentration. Ditto for the reduction of nitrate or nitrite. As for the notion that a molecule exists that “detoxifies” ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, etc. in an aquarium, that is likely advertising lingo, or more precisely, B.S.

 

[GARRIGA]

Garriga Im interested to know when you encountered ammonia issues in a reef and how that was determined

honestly seeking pattern outliers…was this in a dry rock setup where ammonia was added, and no bottle bac?

Reflecting on the fact I've relied on it to treat tap water for my freshwater and salt experiments. I don't test for ammonia post cycle unless I'm seeing issues. Few times I've done that I hadn't seen the presence of ammonia or nitrites. Doesn't confirm at one point I didn't have a spike and the filtration resolved it prior to my testing. Best to run this past are those that might use Seachem alert or monitor ammonia. I believe Seneye does but the latter might be total ammonia. Seachem I believe tests free ammonia.

 

[brandon429]

Analysis of the half million ammonia alert threads posted over the life of our online hobby / display reefing / show these trends that indicate no problem, in my opinion:


asymptomatic. At most, a fish has died recently (they don’t do fallow or quarantine or any disease prep) and the problem is pinned squarely on a .25-.5 api ammonia read as nh4 which is then extrapolated to having too few bacteria which then leads to a sales impulse to buy bottled bacteria. It’s all a false loop. Insert Prime at this point into the sales looping.

no harsh loading. The ammonia dosing thread shows us all using seneye across tanks how much shock absorbency these systems have, due to active surface area ratios + current inherently modeled in each display tank we build from seeing pics of another.

Every single standout ammonia panic post is a high surface area reef tank, fast water current over contact surfaces, relaying nh4 guesstimates to peers, with no advanced load testing like the ammonia dosing thread shows all reefs can handle.

Ammonia control issues in low surface area quarantine setups is common, it's the display ones that are in question

They’re trying to sell us that a reef eighteen weeks old carrying fish the whole time all of a sudden isn’t cycled, because .2 appeared on a Red Sea ammonia test.


the advent of digital ammonia assessment is changing the knowledge of ammonia dynamics, inherent consistency and timing, such that an updated article may be warranted before too long. a thousand seneye owners all operating in the same nh3 range even when modeled down to nano levels, with brief test loads like a dead fish degrading in the tank and not driving past .007 ppm nh3 isn’t a lark, it’s a pattern emerging about what current + surface area means for our hobby

it’s hard to believe prime works when I don’t believe the initial reactionary ammonia event was real. we have been dosing prime to perfectly ammonia-controlled reef tanks. Regarding freshwater / whole different beast I haven’t really looked into ammonia nh4 trending there