Possible Mechanism for Seachem Prime Detoxification of Ammonia

Dan_P

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This (and a few other similar papers I'd seen) seems to describe the seachem films quite well.
The color shift is not quite the same as the indicator (bromocresol green) in the paper, but it's close.

color change disks.jpeg


can compare this vs fig 5b from the paper.

Also this paper supports the idea that amines will generate a color change from the films. Interesting.
Amines affecting films is interesting but not quite relevant to answering the question whether an amino acid can affect the film. An ionized molecule is not likely going to diffuse into a organic film and that is why the Seneye and Seachem films can accurately measure free ammonia. The molecule must get into the film to interact with the indicator molecule. This not an interaction at the surface of the film (My understanding of how these films work)
 

Dan_P

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@DanP @taricha http://www.lmeb.org.cn/attachments/2019-10/01-1571795814-21920.pdf the fig. 2 is salicylate test relies on oxidation/reduction of end molecule. Maybe the dye that is in this not working the same.
The salicylate test uses hypochlorite to form a chloramine Intermediate. This is why primary amines can interfere with this test (false positive) and why products like Prime that neutralize chlorine interfere with the test (false negative). The color changing dye in the colorimetric ammonia sensing film is an acid-base indicator.
 

taricha

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Observation seems to eliminate sulfamic acid as a Prime ingredient.
...or (from what I can tell) as a product that gets generated by Prime meeting ammonia.

Like dr zoidberg showed, Sulfamic acid didn't fool normal API test either.

Left: tank water, center with sulfamic acid 1.5mg/L N, Right ammonia 1.5mg/L N. These had been mixed in tank water for over an hour.
20210917_173058.jpg

I'm moving on from this compound. Nothing I've seen from it fits with observations of how prime behaves.
 

taricha

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Amines affecting films is interesting but not quite relevant to answering the question whether an amino acid can affect the film. An ionized molecule is not likely going to diffuse into a organic film and that is why the Seneye and Seachem films can accurately measure free ammonia. The molecule must get into the film to interact with the indicator molecule. This not an interaction at the surface of the film (My understanding of how these films work)
Thanks. You could see the methylamine and amino acids getting twisted around in my head.
For giggles I am going to run an amino acid or two against the seachem films, but yeah. They aren't gases, so I don't know how you can fool one of those films with any N compound you could actually make from ammonia under SW conditions.

@Lasse I'm sure in specific details the seneye films are different than the seachem ones (color compounds, response time, etc) but conceptually and functionally they seem the same from what I've seen.
 

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...or (from what I can tell) as a product that gets generated by Prime meeting ammonia.

Like dr zoidberg showed, Sulfamic acid didn't fool normal API test either.

Left: tank water, center with sulfamic acid 1.5mg/L N, Right ammonia 1.5mg/L N. These had been mixed in tank water for over an hour.
20210917_173058.jpg

I'm moving on from this compound. Nothing I've seen from it fits with observations of how prime behaves.
How did you weigh this, did you buffer it..etc I know my test near exact 1.1 mg, and I know it was buffered right.
 

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I Notice same with too much sufamic. To be clear those were all sera kit, only used 2 api vials cause someone broke some of my other ones.
 

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The salicylate test uses hypochlorite to form a chloramine Intermediate. This is why primary amines can interfere with this test (false positive) and why products like Prime that neutralize chlorine interfere with the test (false negative). The color changing dye in the colorimetric ammonia sensing film is an acid-base indicator.
chlorinates sulfamic acid..?
 

Dan_P

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How so? I think like earlier either step 1 or 100.
Your sulfamic acid + ammonia gave only a weak response with a salicylate ammonia test. If sulfamic acid was present at a similar concentration in Prime, Prime would work, right?
 

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I am not a chemist, so most of this thread is above my head, but I'm still following because I have been skeptical of products like prime for years. I would love to find out I've been wrong.

To throw another variable into the pot, I recently had difficulty with the Seachem Ammonia test kit that led me to abandon its use.
This (and a few other similar papers I'd seen) seems to describe the seachem films quite well.
The color shift is not quite the same as the indicator (bromocresol green) in the paper, but it's close.

color change disks.jpeg


can compare this vs fig 5b from the paper.

Also this paper supports the idea that amines will generate a color change from the films. Interesting.
I determined that the metal forceps included in the test kit I had contaminated the test. When I used it, I got the purple color in a control sample that I knew had no ammonia. When I used a plastic toothpick to lift the dot from its container, the dot remained yellow during the test. I replicated this result multiple times, cleaning the forceps, and using two different boxes of the test kit. I wrote seachem about this concern, they asked me to send them a video of me running the test, but by that time I had moved on to other test kits and I just didn't see the value of pursuing it.

As a hobbyist who is not a chemist, I am very disturbed that the claims made by product vendors are often unfounded. The generally recognized problems with many API test kits is an excellent example. API is probably the most heavily marketed line of products for beginners. Very few beginners will find articles disputed their claims or not take time to read them, or just not understand them.

Someone asked why lawsuits against these companies do not exist. Which hobbyists have the financial resources to do so? Which hobbyists have the scientific data to make challenges? And which retail businesses are willing to contradict any of their highest selling products?

Thank you to you experts that can take the time to enlighten the rest of us.
 
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Dan_P

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I am not a chemist, so most of this thread is above my head, but I'm still following because I have been skeptical of products like prime for years. I would love to find out I've been wrong.

To throw another variable into the pot, I recently had difficulty with the Seachem Ammonia test kit that led me to abandon its use.

I determined that the metal forceps included in the test kit I had contaminated the test. When I used it, I got the purple color in a control sample that I knew had no ammonia. When I used a plastic toothpick to lift the dot from its container, the dot remained yellow during the test. I replicated this result multiple times, cleaning the forceps, and using two different boxes of the test kit. I wrote seachem about this concern, they asked me to send them a video of me running the test, but by that time I had moved on to other test kits and I just didn't see the value of pursuing it.

As a hobbyist who is not a chemist, I am very disturbedh that the claims made by product vendors are often unfounded. The generally recognized problems with many API test kits is an excellent example. API is probably the most heavily marketed line of products for beginners. Very few beginners will find articles disputed their claims or not take time to read them, or just not understand them.

Someone asked why lawsuits against these companies do not exist. Which hobbyists have the financial resources to do so? Which hobbyists have the scientific data to make challenges? And which retail businesses are willing to contradict any of their highest selling products?

Thank yo to you experts that can take the time to enlighten the rest of us.
API tests seem to be formulated to give intense colors in the minimum amount of time. As a consequence the color at zero is very intense and makes color matching at low levels of the analyte difficult. @taricha and I found that simply using less reagent and extending the color development time can improve test performance. It takes some lab work to do modify the kits. We have done this with the ammonia test kit and are looking now at the nitrite and phosphate kits.

The point is that the chemistry that the API kits use is reliable. It is the formulation for the aquarium user’s need for speed and deep colors that compromises the kit’s accuracy.
.
As for the Seachem ammonia test kit, I had high hopes for it. I did not like the unevenness of the coloration of the little sensor dots or the time needed for regeneration of the dots. @taricha has mastered the use of these sensor dots and works around their weaknesses. I found the Seachem ammonia alert to be quite accurate and colored up evenly.
 

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Someone asked why lawsuits against these companies do not exist. Which hobbyists have the financial resources to do so? Which hobbyists have the scientific data to make challenges? And which retail businesses are willing to contradict any of their highest selling products?

Seachem has made a fortune lying to hobbyists for the last 2-3 decades. Prime is what made them and is still their flagship product.

The solution is deceptive advertising class actions. The problem is finding a law firm willing to take a relatively small and technically complex case. They'd rather go after General Mills making "all natural" claims where damages are greater and the landscape is one they're familiar with.

That being said, I'm working a somewhat different angle and it's possible we'll see a class action against Seachem within the next two years or so as a result.
 
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Randy Holmes-Farley

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you need to react the ammonia with sulfamic acid

Just to be clear, sulfamic aicd is the proposed product of ammonia reacting with the unknown Prime ingredient, it is not proposed as the Prime ingredient itself.

Sulfamic acid is NH2-SO3- (shown as sulfamate). One might call it aminosulfonate.

it is exactly analogous to the proposed product when Amquel (hydroxymethane sulfonate) reacts with ammonia to form NH2CH2SO3- (amino methanesulfonate). The latter just has an extra carbon atom in it.
 

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Your sulfamic acid + ammonia gave only a weak response with a salicylate ammonia test. If sulfamic acid was present at a similar concentration in Prime, Prime would work, right?
The other test I am skeptical it was exactly 1.1 mg/L. Going much over causes it to go a weird yellow color. Exactly weighing dry makes the green like my vials shown. Its definitely not same concentration.
 

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Just to be clear, sulfamic aicd is the proposed product of ammonia reacting with the unknown Prime ingredient, it is not proposed as the Prime ingredient itself.

Sulfamic acid is NH2-SO3- (shown as sulfamate). One might call it aminosulfonate.

it is exactly analogous to the proposed product when Amquel (hydroxymethane sulfonate) reacts with ammonia to form NH2CH2SO3- (amino methanesulfonate). The latter just has an extra carbon atom in it.
By this I ment actually make the ammonium salt.
 
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Randy Holmes-Farley

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By this I ment actually make the ammonium salt.

The ammonium salt of sulfamic acid (if it is present at all) is not important in the water. The ammonium ion in it will be no different in any way than the chloride salt of ammonium. They are unattached in solution and just mutually ignore and repel each other as do all ions of opposite charge.
 

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The ammonium salt of sulfamic acid (if it is present at all) is not important in the water. The ammonium ion in it will be no different in any way than the chloride salt of ammonium. They are unattached in solution and just mutually ignore and repel each other as do all ions of opposite charge.
Yes but if the ingredients make this. Where I think they saw other test show prime alters strips. In the tank after reactions. It would be ammonium salt. Recreating ammonium salt versus just testing sulfamic acid, or changing equilibrium may cause these strips to read. This was all before I figured strips maybe thymol blue, so it is irrelevant now.
 
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Randy Holmes-Farley

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Yes but if the ingredients make this. Where I think they saw other test show prime alters strips. In the tank after reactions. It would be ammonium salt. Recreating ammonium salt versus just testing sulfamic acid, or changing equilibrium may cause these strips to read. This was all before I figured strips maybe thymol blue, so it is irrelevant now.

There's no reason to focus on the ammonium salt of sulfamic acid as if it were a thing in solution.

Ions in solution move around independently. Like sodium and chloride in seawater. They are not attached and do not move together.

Since seawater will have many thousands of times more cations in general than ammonium, the cations near any given sulfamate will not include an ammnonium in the very great majority of sulfmate cases, and just having an ammonium nearby the sulfamate is not important from any chemical perspective, including testing of any kind.
 
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Randy Holmes-Farley

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@Randy Holmes-Farley Yes but if it was ammonium sulfamate. Would there not be NH3, as well as NH4 after dissolution of the salt? Would this not effect the strips? I think it would.

If one made a solution containing ammonium sulfamate (meaning there is ammonia and ammonium and sulfamate in solution) , it will show in a test just the same as ammonium chloride solution or household ammonia (ammonium hydroxide) unless the sulfamate itself messed up the test chemistry somehow (which is unrelated to whether the ammonia/ammonia is detectable).
 

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