Does Prime actually "Detoxify" free ammonia, NH3?

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I’m just reporting what happened over the past few days

Nitrate was the same color as it has been - barely above zero - and I’ve been tracking this for weeks because I’m having a low nutrient issue

My ammonia had a sudden spike which was confirmed over 3 test kits, I dosed prime aggressively, now it’s near 0 with no other change in other params

Maybe the tank handled it in one day with no detectable change in nitrate or nitrite, or maybe Prime had some beneficial effect

You seem to be aggressively dismissing this because it goes against the running hypothesis - I personally don’t have a dog in the fight and I’m just reporting what I’m seeing first hand

(This ammonia spike is what drove me to find this thread in the first place)

I don’t understand, I’m not dismissing any observation that you made and your assertion that I am indicates that you are misunderstanding what I am saying.

Simply put, every observation you made is perfectly consistent with Prime doing nothing. It is also consistent with Prime being useful to detoxify ammonia.

Thus, none of your observations bear on whether it did anything useful or not.

 

[Dan_P]

FWIW, I’m not sure the traditional nitrogen cycle has all that much to do with ammonia uptake and consumption in an operating reef tank.

Here is a pilot study I just ran on a ~5 year old aquarium. I removed sand from the surface of the sand bed. I stored a portion in the freezer overnight to kill life forms with little chance of messing with the chemistry of the sand surface. I then placed the sand in an Instant Ocean medium with 0.5 ppm NH3 and 1.1 ppm PO4. The flasks were swirled on an orbital mixer 24 hours. Flasks were illuminated, some not. Data below is reported in mg of analyte per gram of sand. Phosphate consumption was higher than calculated PO4 adsorption by clean sand.

The frozen sand showed less activity than the live sand (unfrozen) but not zero activity. Sand with no illumination was a little less active than illuminated sand. The big difference was live sand in the dark accumulated nitrite, suggesting ammonia oxidation. More nitrite was measured than ammonia consumed, but given the precision of the experiment, I am not worrying about it.

Was the NH3 with illuminated live sand consumed mostly by photoautotrophs but by chemoautotrophs in the dark? Probably more complicated then either or.

 

[taricha]

I was tempted (key word) - having 2 tanks set up - in identical conditions - with saltwater acclimated FEEDER guppies. Then adding small amounts of ammonia - with measurements - until symptoms occurred.

I understand the thought. I looked at the rosy minnows churning in a petco tank for 22 cents each.
Consider how large the possibility is the results will be inconclusive or less conclusive than you hope.

Do you know LC50 NH3 data for those guppies? (I don't)
Erratic behavior is sort of in the eye of the beholder. It might be necessary to go to loss of swimming or death to be definitive.
Think about how high you are willing to go in total ammonia and pH and still consider it was a "fair test" of Prime in your eyes.
If all you are willing to do is go up to 5ppm total ammonia (what Prime explicitly says it is meant to cover), at pH 8.3, then compare the resulting calculated NH3 - 0.398 mg/L NH3 to the LC50 data (which I don't know if we have) for the fish.

If you have to go to something like 4 days, then the complications mount dramatically. You have to think carefully about feeding, or it's partially a starvation test.
If you feed, you introduce the possibility of heterotrophs using the carbon and lowering NH3 by some amount. You may need to do once or twice daily 100% water changes at the target ammonia and matched pH to be certain you are actually maintaining those values.
Newly bought fish bring diseases etc. Those diseases can affect an entire tank. I'm fairly confident an experienced reefer can recognize fish disease, but if the ammonia stress persists for days - disease may be a manifestation of the stress.

edit: I found some LC50 NH3 data.
From EPA guideline[pdf]
"Rubin and Elmaraghy (1976, 1977) tested guppy (Poecilia reticulata) fry
and reported 96-hour LC5Os (Table 1) averaging 1.50 mg/liter NH3; mature
guppy males were more tolerant, with 100 percent survival for 96 hours at
concentrations of 0.17 to 1.58 mg/liter NH3."

That seems to put them entirely out of range for a definitive test within your bounds of what's "fair" to Prime. So I'd say this test is not worth attempting.

I think this is a general problem - most anything we'd be sorta OK with killing by ammonia is likely too tough to do so within the explicit amounts that Prime claims it protects from.

 

[Malcontent]

An in vivo head to head comparison would certainly be useful.

People have been challenging Seachem on this for years, and I recall one of them claiming Seachem threatened action against them, though i cannot find it now. Despite this public challenge, yet not once have they ever trotted out the evidence that you say they claimed to have.

One wonders why not.

Seachem does publish studies when they think they can pull the wool over people's eyes though...

 

[Malcontent]

More cringe...

 

[taricha]

a bit in the weeds, but BTW I didn't find any detectable formaldehyde in my Prime. So not sure what the conditions were of this person's result and it might not be replicable.

That test from the above article seems to be an airborne Formaldehyde test like this one.
If the author simply held Prime nearby and detected formaldehyde, this might be a proper detection.

Top: just the room (sensing solution is opened to air for 30 minutes)
Bottom Left, 3 drops of formalin in a weighing dish next to the detecting solution - clear result - nearby formalin produces airborne formaldehyde.
Bottom right, Prime poured into 3 dishes set next to the detecting solution during the 30 minutes - none detected.

 

[Dan_P]

a bit in the weeds, but BTW I didn't find any detectable formaldehyde in my Prime. So not sure what the conditions were of this person's result and it might not be replicable.



Top: just the room (sensing solution is opened to air for 30 minutes)
Bottom Left, 3 drops of formalin in a weighing dish next to the detecting solution - clear result - nearby formalin produces airborne formaldehyde.
Bottom right, Prime poured into 3 dishes set next to the detecting solution during the 30 minutes - none detected.

I was just thinking that proving Big Foot does not exist might be a tiny bit easier than proving the benefits of Prime do not exist.

 

[Malcontent]

a bit in the weeds, but BTW I didn't find any detectable formaldehyde in my Prime. So not sure what the conditions were of this person's result and it might not be replicable.



Top: just the room (sensing solution is opened to air for 30 minutes)
Bottom Left, 3 drops of formalin in a weighing dish next to the detecting solution - clear result - nearby formalin produces airborne formaldehyde.
Bottom right, Prime poured into 3 dishes set next to the detecting solution during the 30 minutes - none detected.

Could they have added Prime directly to the detecting solution..? I've seen several people attempt to prove Prime works by adding a few drops to the 5 mL API test vial...

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Could they have added Prime directly to the detecting solution..? I've seen several people attempt to prove Prime works by adding a few drops to the 5 mL API test vial...

Adding Prime to the API ammonia test is a useless wrecking of the method.

The API is a salicylate test based on the color change to yellow and green.

In that test method, ammonia reacts with hypochlorite to form monochloramine, which then reacts with salicylate in the presence of sodium nitro-ferricyanide to form 5-aminosalicylate. That complex is yellow to green to dark green based on the level of ammonia present.

Obviously, Prime reacts with monochloramine to break it down (Seachem claims this and there's no reason to doubt it). Thus, it cannot proceed to react with the salicylate.

Consequently, adding Prime to the test itself is an exercise in futility.

 

[Malcontent]

Adding Prime to the API ammonia test is a useless wrecking of the method.

The API is a salicylate test based on the color change to yellow and green.

In that test method, ammonia reacts with hypochlorite to form monochloramine, which then reacts with salicylate in the presence of sodium nitro-ferricyanide to form 5-aminosalicylate. That complex is yellow to green to dark green based on the level of ammonia present.

Obviously, Prime reacts with monochloramine to break it down (Seachem claims this and there's no reason to doubt it). Thus, it cannot proceed to react with the salicylate.

Consequently, adding Prime to the test itself is an exercise in futility.

They do it to the nitrite and nitrate tests too. One example...

 

[taricha]

They do it to the nitrite and nitrate tests too. One example...

Hach lists reducing agents as sources of interference in the NO2 method (and therefore NO3 also) as well...

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Maybe they are the ones who told Seachem it works for nitrate, lol

 

[Malcontent]

Even more cringe...

 

[taricha]

So I finally had a thought about how to replicate this result on the airborne formaldehyde test....

That test from the above article seems to be an airborne Formaldehyde test like this one.

Previously I saw no formaldehyde from Prime, compared to putting a few drops of formalin near the detector kit....

Top: just the room (sensing solution is opened to air for 30 minutes)
Bottom Left, 3 drops of formalin in a weighing dish next to the detecting solution - clear result - nearby formalin produces airborne formaldehyde.
Bottom right, Prime poured into 3 dishes set next to the detecting solution during the 30 minutes - none detected.

...but it bugged me that I could see a very slight blush of blue and if I pipetted air from inside a bottle of Prime across the detection liquid I got some more hints of blue. So it wasn't zero, just real tiny which made me wonder how they got the strong blue result.

Could they have added Prime directly to the detecting solution..?

Trying this, No. A small amount of prime liquid added to the detector solution gives nothing.
But doing it the following way does work: enclosing some Prime liquid in a small volume with the detector actually (mostly) replicates the strong blue result.
A couple of mL of Prime from two small bottles in wide dishes held in a 1L enclosed beaker with the detecting liquid captures enough evaporated material from Prime to cause the kit to clearly register something that looks to it like formaldehyde.

(I don't know enough about the kit chemistry to have any idea on how close to formaldehyde a chemical has to be to register on the kit. Nor do I know what this means for the concentration in Prime liquid - except way way less than formalin.)

 

[Malcontent]

My god, there's a part 2...

 

[taricha]

My god, there's a part 2...

ooof.
I retract anything I said earlier that was complementary about the info from these authors. This is the central demonstration, and it's so wrong it hurts - it's only usefulness is to concisely convey that they have no clue what's going on.

If anybody wants details of the salicylate/indophenol total ammonia reaction, I attached a snippet on the ammonia test from Methods of Seawater Analysis by Grasshoff. It covers things like necessary basic pH, chloramine, and the formation of the blue/green colored end product.

 

[nobik]

There is also Seachem Amguard that is for this purpose. Do anyone used it?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

There is also Seachem Amguard that is for this purpose. Do anyone used it?

Seachem does not describe either product, but it sounds just like a more concentrated version of Prime.

 

[Punchanello]

I've used Prime a number of times over many years in fresh and salt water. Admittedly, mostly to try to save fish from my own incompetence.

My default position is usually deep scepticism of anything in this hobby in a bottle that doesn't list the ingredients and an explanation of how it works is intellectual property hidden behind a patent.

Prime says it "detoxifies" ammonia. I can categorically say that I have no idea how one would do that or even have enough knowledge to guess. But the only thing I see in this thread is proof that if Prime does anything at all re: ammonia it isn't showing up on a test kit and probably doesn't "bind" ammonia.

I can also say that I have seen many fish showing classic signs of ammonia toxicity in tanks I know are not cycled properly perk up almost instantly when Prime is added. Perhaps, some form of fish Xanax and opium is in Prime so they don't care whether they live or die and they can't feel ammonia burning through their gills.

The alternative is that Prime does nothing to neutralise, bind, reduce, obliterate or magic away ammonia and all those fish survived but were suffering the whole time. That's a sad thought.

 

[littlefoxx]

This started when @Dan_P was looking at measuring NH3 with seneye and was curious about performance near zero NH3. I suggested trying Prime to artificially zero out the NH3 sensor, and the results were weird... so I checked with my seachem kit.

Prime by Seachem is commonly used to treat tap water, it dechlorinates Chlorine and Chloramine. This effect is strong and easily measurable by test kits.

But Prime also claims that it "...detoxifies ammonia. Prime® converts ammonia into a safe, non-toxic form that is readily removed by the tank’s biofilter." They say that the normal dose of Prime can detoxify 1ppm ammonia.

NH3 is the toxic form of ammonia, which under normal tank conditions is a tiny part of the total ammonia (Randy's Article for details). Most chemical kits measure total ammonia - NH3+NH4, and so seachem says that these kits can't detect the effect of Prime to detoxify NH3. And one should instead use a test method that measures only free ammonia - NH3 instead, according to Seachem - such as their kit.
"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 (total ammonia is both free ammonia and non-toxic ionized forms of ammonia)."

So here we go.

I pulled a liter of tank water, spiked it with ammonia to ~1ppm total ammonia.

API at 5 min confirms it's in the ballpark of 0.5-1ppm total ammonia.


Then I dosed a drop of Prime from two separate bottles (one new unopened) into the 1L of water. Approximately a double dose from each for a cumulative 4x dose of Prime and stirred.

After 30 minutes, I then used the ammonia sensing films from the seachem kit to see if the measured free ammonia, NH3 was decreased by the "detoxifying" effect of Prime.
The ammonia sensing discs are supposed to be read at 15 or 30 minutes to determine free ammonia.

Each beaker has ~75mL of sample water.
Bottom left is tank water only - clean zero
Two in the middle top and bottom are replicates of tank water +1ppm total ammonia - disks form a color as they should, approximately consistent with 1ppm total ammonia at ~8.0pH (maybe around 0.05 on the top 30 minute scale of the color card)
Top right beaker is tank water +1ppm total ammonia +4x dose of Prime - the disk forms exactly the same color as the samples that were not treated with Prime. The same amount of NH3 is apparently present.

So according to Seachem's free ammonia kit, Seachem Prime does not do anything to decrease toxic free ammonia, NH3. If it has any effect, it's gone within 30 minutes.

(BTW, when I overdose prime to 30x recommended dose, it still didn't decrease the NH3 measured.)

Maybe Prime worked better for @Dan_P measuring with the Seneye NH3 sensing device???

Update: see Dan's measured zero effect from Prime with two more ammonia detecting kits in post number 16

Update: Amphipods seem to fare equally poorly when exposed to NH3, whether treated with Prime or not. post number 44

This was good to read! I was under the impression this product was good in oh s- situations but apparently not! I never used it much, only in my QT tank while I work on water changes if levels are high. Will not be getting this product again, kinda a waste of money.