Testing for Ammonia vs. Ammonium

[sanfran94107]

I'm not sure what you are getting at..ammonium NH4 is less harmful to the fish so you can get a false positive when treating tap water with a de-chlorinator that affect chloramine by breaking the chlorine ammonia bond
nd binds a hydrogen to NH3 to make it NH4.
if you are reading NH3 at 1.0ppm there is a a good chance the fish will have serious damage to their gills.
all I mentioned was that the API test will test NH3/NH4 so you may not know what it is actually showing.

That is exactly what I am getting at. If the API test for NHx reads 1.0, I have no idea how much of that is Ammonia (NH3) vs. Ammonium (NH4). If I also factor in that my fish "seem" happy, I can only assume that not all of that 1.0 reading for NHx is Ammonia.

Also, can you refer me to a kit which tests only for Ammonia?

 

[Star_Rider]

if the fish are 'happy' you probably aren't exposing them to NH3(ammonia) if the tank is cycled the ammonia will be used by beneficial bacteria.

I believe NH4 is also used by the bacteria

not sure if I can find a test for just NH3 but heres a link that explains TAN's and relationship to pH and temp.
it describes a way to determine the (UIA) unionized ammonia which is the harmful ammonia.

hope this helps

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FA031

 

[kveeti]

Also, can you refer me to a kit which tests only for Ammonia?

If you can read past the 'loud' background wallpaper:

quoting, in part:
There are other kits/indicators that use a base of the Salicylate reagent along with some thing else (I am not sure what) to allow them to read thru (disregard) bound ammonia and read only free ammonia.

These would be the Ammonia Alert card by Seachem, the Multitest Free and Total Ammonia test kit by Seachem, the Mydor test kit (reads free ammonia only) and the LaMotte Salicylate test kit for use with Amquel. The latter is very expensive.

http://www.nfkc.info/Discussions on ammonia.htm

 

[Star_Rider]

If you can read past the 'loud' background wallpaper:

quoting, in part:
There are other kits/indicators that use a base of the Salicylate reagent along with some thing else (I am not sure what) to allow them to read thru (disregard) bound ammonia and read only free ammonia.

These would be the Ammonia Alert card by Seachem, the Multitest Free and Total Ammonia test kit by Seachem, the Mydor test kit (reads free ammonia only) and the LaMotte Salicylate test kit for use with Amquel. The latter is very expensive.

http://www.nfkc.info/Discussions on ammonia.htm

good catch..I didn;t have time to do much research on them but was aware there are tests for free ammonia(many test total ammonia)

 

[sanfran94107]

Thanks star_rider and kveeti,
Looks like there are several test kits out there to test free Ammonia! Thanks for the confirmation -- I didn't know that they existed or where/what to look for.

 

[Squawkbert]

If you have some seriously acidic water (pH<6), add a few grains of baking soda to the mix to drive teh pH up a bit. That will convert any NH4 to NH3. NH4 is just NH3 in an acidic environment (picking up stray H+ ions via dative bonding). If I saw a 1.0 reading, I would be more concerned about where my bucket is than how much of that 1.0 is NH4...

 

[vootsy]

Test Kit

Seachem's ammonia multi test, which I am currently using, does check for free toxic ammonia and seperately checks for ammonium. I love it, since I am using Prime as a water conditioner. Get's rid of false positive ammonia
readings.