Salifert test kit question...

[Jedi1199]

OK guys.. here is a silly rookie question for ya..

When you draw out water via the syringe to do your tests, do you tap out the air bubble that gets trapped or measure to the line with the bubble there?

For a test that only uses 1ml of water (Nitrate test) that bubble could swing results quite a bit.

 

[KingTideCorals]

OK guys.. here is a silly rookie question for ya..

When you draw out water via the syringe to do your tests, do you tap out the air bubble that gets trapped or measure to the line with the bubble there?

For a test that only uses 1ml of water (Nitrate test) that bubble could swing results quite a bit.

Get to the line marked with no air bubbles for the best results no doubt!

 

[Jedi1199]

Get to the line marked with no air bubbles for the best results no doubt!

OK Thanks!! That's what I have been doing, but wanted to see if I was doing it wrong..

 

[GoVols]

OK guys.. here is a silly rookie question for ya..

When you draw out water via the syringe to do your tests, do you tap out the air bubble that gets trapped or measure to the line with the bubble there?

For a test that only uses 1ml of water (Nitrate test) that bubble could swing results quite a bit.

No don't do anything, the air bubble is fine.

Pull it back to 1ml forget about the bubble and start pushing out your reagent.

Reef Chemistry Question of the Day #161 Using a Syringe

Reef Chemistry Question of the Day #160 I have just drawn tank water into a syringe with a tip (shown below, including a blowup of the barrel). The blue coloration shows where the fluid is. When I started to draw fluid in, the tip and syringe were empty and the plunger was all the way in...

www.reef2reef.com

And the answer is...B. 2.9 mL

Here's how to think about how a syringe works:

When the plunger is pushed all the way in, the leading edge of the plunger aligns with the zero mL marking. That is true of nearly every syringe I've seen. When you begin to use it, the tip and barrel are empty, with the tip containing air and the barrel occupied by the plunger.

As you draw back the plunger with the tip in a liquid, the plunger creates a vacuum between it and the liquid, drawing in the liquid. The movement of the plunger draws in exactly the amount of liquid equal in volume to the travel of the plunger backwards (or upwards). So you can track how much fluid is taken up exactly by the travel of the plunger against the volume markings, regardless of what you see with the fluid (assuming it is functioning properly).

Some of the drawn in liquid will be in the tip, and some (or perhaps none, if it is all in the tip) will be in the barrel of the syringe. If the volume of the tip is larger than the volume indicated by the movement of the plunger, none will show in the barrel. Many modern pipettes work this way to avoid contaminating the barrel of the device. The device stays clean and the tip is discarded after each use.

Now, when you go to dispense the liquid, the plunger is pushed in, and all of the liquid is dispensed and the air is pushed back into the tip.

If you mistakenly tipped the syringe upward during dispensing, and blew out the air before the liquid, then when you push the plunger all the way in, there will still be liquid in the tip, and you probably won't know how much so you end up with a mismeasurement.

In the medical world, it can be super important to not inject air into a patient's bloodstream. In that case, the syringe must first be overfilled. It is then tipped up and all of the air blown out and some liquid may be blown out until the end of the plunger is exactly aligned with the volume marking you want to dispense. The syringe in total now contains the amount you want to inject, plus the volume of the the needle. Then you inject and when done, the needle is still full of liquid in the exact amount as before injection, and like before, the amount dispensed is exactly determined by the movement of the plunger. So this situation is no different except that you start and end with a full tip/needle. In a non-injection setting, you start and end with an air-filled tip.

So it doesn't matter how much liquid you see in the barrel. Only the movement of the plunger is important, whatever the use.

 

[PatW]

The bubble comes from the air volume hidden in the sryinge. So when you draw up reagent, you get a bubble against the plunger of the syringe. But draw it up to the 1 ml line and you will have 1 ml of reagent. So no worries.