prime and the such

i use prime water conditioner and it states it removes ammonia. i have no idea how these ammonia removing products work, but out of curiosity wat does the bacteria eat if it removes ammonia or does the ingredient just remove existing ammonia and is then non active? could this somehow restart the cycle if you were doing a daily 10% water change?

There are 2 very good questions there, Dar.

I don't use Prime.
I'm more of a Tetra Aqua Safe person (tradition and all that), but I also have AmQuel and zeolites for removing ammonia from the tank if there is ever a need for such action.

I like to know exactly what is in the chemicals I add.
Tetra AquaSafe contains sodium hydroxymethanesulfinate as a means to remove ammonia from the 'breakdown' of chloramines. It is not really intended for use in removing ammonia within the tank.

In AmQuel, there is Sodium hydroxymethanesulfonate. That is intended to remove ammonia from a fish tank.

The way that AmQuel works is by 'binding' up the ammonia to the above chemical (ie effectively it keeps the hydrogen attached to an ammonium group) such that there is something (aminomethanesulfonate) that is very very much less toxic to fish. Methanal (formaldehyde) looks as though it is released in this reaction...but it should be nothing to worry about.

As for Prime??? I don't use it, so have never really looked much closer at it.
But there are words that it contains a complex mix of hydrosulphites and bisulphites.

Now going by its action on ammonia and nitrites and nitrates and some of the known chemicals in it, I'm guessing that it produces a cyclic imine (a Schiffs base) to 'bind up' the ammonia.


Next point raised.....what will the nitrosofying bacteria use as a substrate if ammonia is bound up?

As said, I don't use Prime (that's the 3rd time I've said that ), but it may work like that of AmQuel and AquaSafe wrt feeding nitrosofying bacteria.
The ammonium moiety on the complexed compound can be utilised by nitrosofying bacteria....hence ammonia would be available.

If you used zeolite resins, then that would not be the case.

But is everything hunky dory? nope. !!!!
You should not really measure ammonia after addition of AmQuel or Prime or any other reagent that complexes the ammonia/ammonium moiety......well, you could do the ammonia test, but the results may not be accurate unless somehow you have accounted for the action of the ammonia-removing reagent:
at the pH of most common ammonia test kits, the ammonia would be released and measured by the kit as a false positive.

Remember, you are not interested in how much ammonia would be in the tank if you didn't remove the ammonia....you want to know how much free unionised ammonia (the highly toxic stuff) is in the tank.

Hope I didn't go too scientific (although you did ask for a chemical reaction), but hope that may go to help answer the question.
If the makers of Prime told us exactly what was in it, then I could be of more help.

ian

Prime has to be the best value for money as regards mils to litres. I've used it before without any issues whatsoever. This topic has come up before with Platy 252 recommening it highly, so that's enough for me.

Dave