Very confused about Prime and the results I'm getting from testing...

hm....

volkl23 said:
Thanks for all the replies guys. It just seems like something is amiss. I've been doing 50% PWC TWICE a day for a very long time now (last 3 weeks out of a total of 8 weeks) and nothing seems to be changing.

I get up in the morning and test my water. Ammonia - .25, Nitrites, .5-.65 so I do a 50% change.

At night, I do another check. ammonia .25, nitrites .5-.65 so I do another 50% change.

Rinse and repeat. Also, the ammonia is from chloramined water. I believe it's a false positive from Prime. After a full day, my ammonia is completely gone (but at the expense of my nitrites going sky high).

Am I just overstocked? I have 6 cherry barbs and 3 rummy-nose tetras in a 20H. I just can't believe this cycling is taking this long. My ammonia bacteria seems to be well-stocked, just not my nitrite ones :*(

PS - I am seeing Nitrates so I guess I do have nitrite bacteria.


So the consensus is water changes DO NOT SLOW down the cycling process?
Click to expand...

Couple of points:

I disagree with the majority. I think your tank MAY ALREADY BE CYCLED, but the excessive water changes are overwhelming the nitrating bacteria with too much nitrite. The WCs may be giving you MORE nitrite than the fish are. So... to decrease the nitrite, you should stop WCs. It might be counter intuitive, but you need to cut off the major source of ammonium. Either it's the fish or it's the WCs. I believe it's the WCs.

My opinion is to just let the tank run its course. Stop WCs. Monitor every day, but don't change the water for at least a week. You may lose some fish in the process, because your water has such nigh nitrites already, but sometimes that's unavoidable.

Other questions to ask yourself:
Are you sure your test kit is giving you accurate results? Perhaps your results are off? Are you using the correct procedure for testing?

About the NH3 and NH4+, they are the same thing. NH3 is the conjugate base of NH+ (ammonium ion). You can't separate them. At any given pH, there will be a particular ratio of the two in any aqueous solution (water). At high pH, (above 9.2) there will be more NH3. At low pH (below 9.2) there will be more NH4+. At pH 9.2 the ratio will be 50/50. They are constantly converted from one to the other by passing a hydrogen ion to and from H2O to form H3O+ (or other acids or bases that may be in the water). So, if you suddenly removed all the NH3 from your aquarium, more NH3 would appear out of the NH4+ reservoir and equilibrium would be reached nearly instantly. So... treat them as one chemical, even though only NH3 or NH4+ may be reactive in a particular chemical reaction. If there is something gobbling up the NH3, eventually all the NH4+ will be gone too. Does that make any sense?
 
abh19 said:
Couple of points:

I disagree with the majority. I think your tank MAY ALREADY BE CYCLED, but the excessive water changes are overwhelming the nitrating bacteria with too much nitrite. The WCs may be giving you MORE nitrite than the fish are. So... to decrease the nitrite, you should stop WCs. It might be counter intuitive, but you need to cut off the major source of ammonium. Either it's the fish or it's the WCs. I believe it's the WCs.

My opinion is to just let the tank run its course. Stop WCs. Monitor every day, but don't change the water for at least a week. You may lose some fish in the process, because your water has such nigh nitrites already, but sometimes that's unavoidable.

Other questions to ask yourself:
Are you sure your test kit is giving you accurate results? Perhaps your results are off? Are you using the correct procedure for testing?

About the NH3 and NH4+, they are the same thing. NH3 is the conjugate base of NH+ (ammonium ion). You can't separate them. At any given pH, there will be a particular ratio of the two in any aqueous solution (water). At high pH, (above 9.2) there will be more NH3. At low pH (below 9.2) there will be more NH4+. At pH 9.2 the ratio will be 50/50. They are constantly converted from one to the other by passing a hydrogen ion to and from H2O to form H3O+ (or other acids or bases that may be in the water). So, if you suddenly removed all the NH3 from your aquarium, more NH3 would appear out of the NH4+ reservoir and equilibrium would be reached nearly instantly. So... treat them as one chemical, even though only NH3 or NH4+ may be reactive in a particular chemical reaction. If there is something gobbling up the NH3, eventually all the NH4+ will be gone too. Does that make any sense?
Click to expand...
Wow, I think you may be right. With this assumption, I'm guessing ammonia bacteria eat up ammonia at a faster rate, plus there is probably a lot more in the colony and when they all convert it to nitrites, there isn't enough or they don't eat fast enough.

Another evidence of this theory is that nitrates appeared more than 4 weeks ago. I am just going to bite the nail and hope for the best.

Do you think it would be wise to do a pwc,say 25% if my nitrites get too high, say 1.5-2.0?
 
Yeah, if your nitrates have appeared, that's good. Oh, do you have enough surfaces for the bacteria to attach to? Is there gravel? fake plants? real plants? how is the filter? you may have mentioned these before, I forget.

I thought of something though....

You can get rid of chloramine using carbon filtration. This will REMOVE all of it (it gets stuck to the carbon), it doesn't just convert it to ammonia like the chemical additives do. So.... I'd carbon filter any water you add to the aquarium, at least until all the bacteria is well established, then you could go back to using the chemicals.

If you have a brita filter or another carbon filter, it should work OK. (Just make sure the cartridge isn't too old - they do get "saturated" quickly. Britas only last a month). I don't remember if activated carbon removes ammonia (but I don't think it does), so I wouldn't treat with prime at all, just use the carbon on any water you have to put in the tank.

If the fish get stressed, or you think your nitrites go too high, do WCs with carbon filtered water.

How does that sound?
 
abh19 said:
Yeah, if your nitrates have appeared, that's good. Oh, do you have enough surfaces for the bacteria to attach to? Is there gravel? fake plants? real plants? how is the filter? you may have mentioned these before, I forget.

I thought of something though....

You can get rid of chloramine using carbon filtration. This will REMOVE all of it (it gets stuck to the carbon), it doesn't just convert it to ammonia like the chemical additives do. So.... I'd carbon filter any water you add to the aquarium, at least until all the bacteria is well established, then you could go back to using the chemicals.

If you have a brita filter or another carbon filter, it should work OK. (Just make sure the cartridge isn't too old - they do get "saturated" quickly. Britas only last a month). I don't remember if activated carbon removes ammonia (but I don't think it does), so I wouldn't treat with prime at all, just use the carbon on any water you have to put in the tank.

If the fish get stressed, or you think your nitrites go too high, do WCs with carbon filtered water.

How does that sound?
Click to expand...
I think I have a lot of surfaces for the bacteria to attach to. Currently I have 2 sponge filter and a disposable carbon filter as well as a big ornamental Taj Mahal with gravel and 5 fake plants.

I will try the brita filter.

Good news though, after 10 hours since the last time I checked for nitrites, it seems as though it has leveled out. It hasn't increased and it's holding at 1.x something.

My fish seems fine for the time being. My rummy nose tetras still have really bright heads :)
 
If you want to use prime to scavenge any chloramines that went thru the filter, that's OK, but it should only be used AFTER carbon filtration, in this case.
 
OK... here's the deal. I didn't bother to look up what Prime does... I just took it as I read on this thread. If you haven't done it, read the links below. Prime doesn't produce NH3 as a biproduct of chloramine degradation. Apparently, Prime should sequester ammonia too, as well as nitrite and nitrate, and allow them to be picked up by your in-tank carbon filter. However, Prime is a REACTANT, not a CATALYST in this reaction; therefore, it is consumed in the process of binding any of these molecules. When you add a certain amount of it to the tank, you can only convert a certain amount of chloramines, ammonia, nitrites or nitrates... if you add more, then you can convert more. It also sounds like it first attacks chloramine and then any ammonia, then any nitrites or nitrates. But it's a little fuzzy - they don't even know why it affects the nitrites and nitrates.

http://seachem.com/products/product_pages/Prime.html
http://www.seachem.com/support/FAQs/Prime_faq.html

Also, I've come across resources that say that activated carbon in some cases will catalyze the breakdown of chloramines into ammonia. I don't know whether this will happen with the carbon in a brita filter... unfortunately these commercial products like Prime and Brita don't really tell you any specifics, to "protect their formula". I hesitate mentioning this, because I don't want to give the impression that activated carbon will convert chloramines to ammonia... I think it normally (like in Brita) just binds the chloramine.

In light of this info, here's the plan I'd suggest:

1) stop water changes temporarily
2) change your in-tank carbon filter(s). With the amount of prime-chloramine and prime-x complexes you've been throwing at it, it probably stopped functioning long ago, unless you've been changing it frequently. Prime sequesters the baddies by binding to them and then they get removed by the carbon filter. So anytime you use prime, you need to have the carbon filter working in good shape.
3) if you want to lower the nitrite levels faster than the bacteria can do it, overdose the tank with Prime (according to their dosage suggestions in the links above) to attempt to lower your nitrites. Check their levels a while after this (an hour??) and see if any changes have occurred. You might have to wait a while - they don't say how long it takes.

As time goes on and if you're only doing a 25% water change every 2 weeks, or something like that, I suspect you'll be fine with using prime rather than pre-filtering WCs with carbon. Just monitor it and see. If I were a fish, however, I would want the carbon filtration - i can't imagine living in the water that comes out of MY tap! Keep in mind that your chloramines could be 5ppm... Keep in mind also that usually a high chlorine level is either an indication of incompetence OR a high bacteria/organic content of the water, which means more nitrogen load. The benefit of a carbon filter is that it removes the chlorine/chloramines and any organic molecules that are in the water.

Note: prime will mess up your ammonia test results. On the website, I couldn't find any indication that prime interferes with the nitrite or nitrate tests. Let us know how it goes.
 
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Prime does not alter ammonia readings.
I add the approiate amount of prime for every water change. Prime is almost instant to remove chlorine,where the water all has to run through the carbon to help rid chloramines. If it were me I would rather have instant results than worrying about the condition of my carbon.
 
1boatnut:
From Seachem's site:

Q: I am using Prime™ to control ammonia but my test kit says it is not doing anything, in fact it looks like it added ammonia! What is going on?
A: A Nessler based kit will not read ammonia properly if you are using Prime™... it will look "off scale", sort of a muddy brown (incidentally a Nessler kit will not work with any other products similar to Prime™). A salicylate based kit can be used, but with caution. Under the conditions of a salicylate kit the ammonia-Prime complex will be broken down eventually giving a false reading of ammonia (same as with other products like Prime™), so the key with a salicylate kit is to take the reading right away. 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 (which is both the free and ionized forms of ammonia (the ionized form is not toxic)).

Q:I tested my tap water after using Prime and came up with an ammonia reading. Is this because of chloramine? Could you explain how this works in removing chloramine?
A: Prime works by removing chlorine from the water and then binds with ammonia until it can be consumed by your biological filtration (chloramine minus chlorine = ammonia). The bond is not reversible and ammonia is still available for your bacteria to consume. Prime will not halt your cycling process.
I am going to assume that you were using a liquid based reagent test kit (Nessler based, silica). Any type of reducing agent or ammonia binder (dechlorinators, etc) will give you a false positive. You can avoid this by using our Multitest Ammonia kit (not affected by reducing agents) or you can wait to test, Prime dissipates from your system within 24 hours.
 
Seachem Prime
"Converts ammonia to non-toxic form which can be removed by biofilter. Can be used to alleviate ammonia/nitrite stress in cycling tank. For exceptionally high chloramine concentrations, a double dose may be used safely. To detoxify nitrite in an emergency, up to 5 times normal dose may be used. If temperature is > 86 °F (30 °C) and chlorine or ammonia levels are low, use a half dose. Prime(tm) will not over-activate skimmers

Prime removes chlorine and chloramine (even in high chloramine levels), and detoxifies ammonia and nitrite. Provides essential ions and stimulates natural slime coat. Prime also detoxifies any heavy metals found in the tap water at typical concentration levels. When used during cycling, Prime enhances nitrate removal and does not cause a pH drop or overactivate protein skimmers. Great for setting up new aquariums, or when adding or changing water, or to remove nitrate


I would question the test kit or how it is performed ?
 
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