Does Prime actually "Detoxify" free ammonia, NH3?

[MnFish1]

Although If your position is that Prime probably doesn't lower NH3, but it may do something we have no evidence of, that seachem doesn't claim, (and no idea if it makes any biological sense at all) that just makes organisms not hurt by swimming in NH3, then I suppose we're pretty close in agreement.

What I'm saying is that despite years of discussion, Seachem says its test works. Its up to them to defend it - not mine. Your job is to defend your tests - which IMHO are lacking in what you are saying which is that 'Prime does not detoxify ammonia'. I don't care what Seachem implies, or suggests, etc. I want to see a study that shows that normally 'dangerous' levels of ammonia are lethal (or cause symptoms) in fish, etc - when exposed to the appropriate amount of prime. Until then, the claim you're making - that Prime does not detoxify ammonia IMHO - despite good intentions does not meet scrutiny.

BTW - I made this point before. People read xxxx Post - who claims he/she has an 'immune tank'. There is no 'proof'. There is no 'data'. Anyone that questions that gets a response similar to 'its impossible to do scientific studies' anecdote is important. There is a LOT of anecdote that Prime helps when ammonia levels are high. But you in this case want to ignore the anecdote in favor of your results - all good.

 

[MnFish1]

I noted before that I thought this discussion might have run its course and has stopped being productive. I feel we are going in circles.

Great - you don't need to respond to my comments. I will not take offense. But - as I said before - I am waiting for answers from Seachem - which you apparently despite trying cannot get. If you don't want to hear those - all good. But - I would suggest that for your next experiment with (cant remember which agent you were going to test) - contact the manufacturer - tell them the plan - and ask for suggestions so that you get the best results possible. Like Call Seneye - ask them the limitations, Call Kordon, ask them. Call whichever other ammonia test you're using - and ask them. I took the time to do that - and it seems like you resent it (at least thats my reading) - if not - I apologize in advance

 

[Dan_P]

Great - you don't need to respond to my comments. I will not take offense. But - as I said before - I am waiting for answers from Seachem - which you apparently despite trying cannot get. If you don't want to hear those - all good. But - I would suggest that for your next experiment with (cant remember which agent you were going to test) - contact the manufacturer - tell them the plan - and ask for suggestions so that you get the best results possible. Like Call Seneye - ask them the limitations, Call Kordon, ask them. Call whichever other ammonia test you're using - and ask them. I took the time to do that - and it seems like you resent it (at least thats my reading) - if not - I apologize in advance

We also find talking with tech support folks useful but only to point. Working at the customer interface is tricky. We appreciate that. We also can sense when to quit wasting their time and our time.

 

[taricha]

I said from the start - do a fish experiment. Even with bait fish eventually. You do not want to do that

I previously asked how high one could go in ammonia/ pH to be in-bounds for toxicity test in your view.
Do you have thoughts?
(BTW weeks ago I did 5ppm and pH 8.5-8.6 on some acartia tonsa, because I looked up LC50 NH3-N concentrations and they had the lowest of any live food I could find. It may or may not surprise you that all treatments did similarly and individuals in each were swimming normally through the 2 days before I pulled the plug. I did not post this total non-result.)

 

[MnFish1]

I previously asked how high one could go in ammonia/ pH to be in-bounds for toxicity test in your view.
Do you have thoughts?
(BTW weeks ago I did 5ppm and pH 8.5-8.6 on some acartia tonsa, because I looked up LC50 NH3-N concentrations and they had the lowest of any live food I could find. It may or may not surprise you that all treatments did similarly and individuals in each were swimming normally through the 2 days before I pulled the plug. I did not post this total non-result.)

I actually do not know. But - I'm assuming that the organisms in the control i.e. ammonia alone - also did fine?

 

[MnFish1]

We also find talking with tech support folks useful but only to point. Working at the customer interface is tricky. We appreciate that. We also can sense when to quit wasting their time and our time.

I might suggest 'hi - we're doing a study and plan to publish the results on an international forum - do you have any caveats/hints/help available?' - to be a good motivator (perhaps). I know that in at least one study I helped on in the forum got great suggestions from multiple companies.

 

[taricha]

I actually do not know. But - I'm assuming that the organisms in the control i.e. ammonia alone - also did fine?

Yeah exactly. I spent a lot of time trying to count pinhead sized swimming little bugs and there was no clear trend of mortality or even obviously different swimming behavior in any treatment:
Control just tank water
Ammonia 5ppm
Ammonia 5ppm + 5x Prime
5x Prime only
(All at pH 8.5-8.6)

 

[MnFish1]

Yeah exactly. I spent a lot of time trying to count pinhead sized swimming little bugs and there was no clear trend of mortality or even obviously different swimming behavior in any treatment:
Control just tank water
Ammonia 5ppm
Ammonia 5ppm + 5x Prime
5x Prime only
(All at pH 8.5-8.6)

Again - thanks for the effort!!!! Seriously

 

[DrZoidburg]

No. re-read my post. I went down to 0.1mg/L Nitrogen of sulfamic acid.

Your either boogering this test or doing something. Here is Exactly 1mg/l sulfamic acid in sea water ph 8.0+/-. API test kit. Other thread test kit was sera. SAME results.

 

[DrZoidburg]

Ran again in freshwater more diluted.
Left control test.

 

[taricha]

Your either boogering this test or doing something. Here is Exactly 1mg/l sulfamic acid in sea water ph 8.0+/-. API test kit. Other thread test kit was sera. SAME results.

your other test was barely light green. This is far darker. Your 1mg/L sulfamic acid is reading as dark or darker than 1mg/L pure ammonia.
my source: What's yours?

 

[DrZoidburg]

your other test was barely light green. This is far darker. Your 1mg/L sulfamic acid is reading as dark or darker than 1mg/L pure ammonia.
my source: What's yours?

same as your first one.

 

[DrZoidburg]

barely light green

I didnt let it sit the full five minutes.

 

[taricha]

same as your first one.

K. I'll try to replicate.

 

[Dan_P]

I might suggest 'hi - we're doing a study and plan to publish the results on an international forum - do you have any caveats/hints/help available?' - to be a good motivator (perhaps). I know that in at least one study I helped on in the forum got great suggestions from multiple companies.

What was the study?

 

[MnFish1]

What was the study?

The bacteria in a bottle study be Dr. Reef

 

[Dan_P]

The bacteria in a bottle study be Dr. Reef

Thank you. I remember that study.

 

[taricha]

K. I'll try to replicate.

@DrZoidburg sent you a PM. still not seeing anything like what you did.
So might hash it out in PM to avoid the tedium of posting a bunch of disagreeing yellow and green pictures.

 

[taricha]

What if Prime "detoxifies" ammonia by blocking its absorption into the fish? I am far from a chemist or biologist so it may not be worth considering. I'm just thinking that it's ability to block absorption may not scale such that a normal dose protects against 1ppm so a double dose must protect against 2ppm.

I wanted to wade into the idea of "detoxifying" NH3 and explore if it could mean something outside of decreasing the concentration / reacting it into another molecule.

(Aside: Prime does claim "linear" protection up to 5ppm ammonia: 5x dose for 5ppm.)

First, (no expertise here - I invite others to drop knowledge) my understanding is NH3 moves out of fish largely but not entirely by diffusion (RHF article), and so the outside concentration need not go into the fish to cause toxicity. If it simply exceeds internal NH3 concentration - the fish won't be able to clear internally generated ammonia. It seems to be mostly a question of whether the external concentration is larger than the internal. Fish have to be able to exchange gases they need and don't need efficiently through tissues so I can't imagine something that was capable of blocking this exchange being helpful.

secondly, (again, no expertise - just trying to be open minded) Read a bit on google scholar for any proposed mechanisms of decreasing the toxicity of NH3 for fish that aren't about changing the concentration of NH3 or simply making it another molecule. Only thing I found was the discussion of ways that fish can detoxify NH3 internally - turn it into glutamine, urea etc in tissues, which some can do if necessary. This requires energy to do, and won't happen externally. These compounds in aquarium water would get pretty rapidly processed by microbes to create ammonia. And the idea of reacting NH3 into one of those compounds in tank water seems to need some energy input to do. The rest of the reading was just about ways that aquaculture in real life actually handles NH3. Biofilters, pH, and Carbon dosing (binders like Amquel/ClorAm-X seem to have small numbers of mentions relatively speaking). I found no evidence of any super cheap chemical like Prime that could actually change toxicity of NH3 without changing the concentration of NH3. I'm not even aware of any proof of concept of the feasibility of such an idea. Would love to hear otherwise, but it seems pretty far-fetched to ascribe such a mechanism to Prime.

Thirdly there's of course occam's razor, that Seachem people say that their disks should show lower NH3 after Prime is used, so trying to invent another mechanism to ascribe to Prime seems needlessly complex.

 

[MnFish1]

I wanted to wade into the idea of "detoxifying" NH3 and explore if it could mean something outside of decreasing the concentration / reacting it into another molecule.

(Aside: Prime does claim "linear" protection up to 5ppm ammonia: 5x dose for 5ppm.)

First, (no expertise here - I invite others to drop knowledge) my understanding is NH3 moves out of fish largely but not entirely by diffusion (RHF article), and so the outside concentration need not go into the fish to cause toxicity. If it simply exceeds internal NH3 concentration - the fish won't be able to clear internally generated ammonia. It seems to be mostly a question of whether the external concentration is larger than the internal. Fish have to be able to exchange gases they need and don't need efficiently through tissues so I can't imagine something that was capable of blocking this exchange being helpful.

secondly, (again, no expertise - just trying to be open minded) Read a bit on google scholar for any proposed mechanisms of decreasing the toxicity of NH3 for fish that aren't about changing the concentration of NH3 or simply making it another molecule. Only thing I found was the discussion of ways that fish can detoxify NH3 internally - turn it into glutamine, urea etc in tissues, which some can do if necessary. This requires energy to do, and won't happen externally. These compounds in aquarium water would get pretty rapidly processed by microbes to create ammonia. And the idea of reacting NH3 into one of those compounds in tank water seems to need some energy input to do. The rest of the reading was just about ways that aquaculture in real life actually handles NH3. Biofilters, pH, and Carbon dosing (binders like Amquel/ClorAm-X seem to have small numbers of mentions relatively speaking). I found no evidence of any super cheap chemical like Prime that could actually change toxicity of NH3 without changing the concentration of NH3. I'm not even aware of any proof of concept of the feasibility of such an idea. Would love to hear otherwise, but it seems pretty far-fetched to ascribe such a mechanism to Prime.

Thirdly there's of course occam's razor, that Seachem people say that their disks should show lower NH3 after Prime is used, so trying to invent another mechanism to ascribe to Prime seems needlessly complex.

This makes sense. As discussed 20 x - the problem is we don't know the exact ingredients of Prime - and according to them - at least MY reading of their website - there are more than 1. Whether its more than one sulfate salt, or something else - I don't know. To me the key here is why do some people (and its been reported before) - find it impossible to show a lower free ammonia after Prime - YET - other's can. IDK. This is why its important IMHO - to get information (if any) from Seachem. They are making the claim that Prime does xxx with their badge. So - I assume they would know where their badge would NOT perform as they claim.