clinton1621

I have noticed a lot of posts about ammonia removing products like Prime and there seems to be a few debates especially with how they interfere with the nitrogen cycle... ammonia removers dont actually "remove" or "lock up" ammonia, they change its chemical form to make a non-toxic ammonia, hence it is still ammonia and will still show up on ammonia tests and will still feed your bacteria, it doesnt interfere with the nitrogen cycle it only makes the ammonia non toxic to your fish.

8/19/2008 EDIT: This is mainly relative to only tanks that are NOT using a cycling product to speed up wait times for a new tank.... cycling products use a different form of bacteria than the true bacteria that are present in a natural setup. I am not advocating the use of any ammonia removing products in any way, if you practice good aquarium maintenance and proper tank set up techniques there is never a reason to use them in the first place. Also the ammonium (non toxic ammonia, NH4) that is caused by using some of these products has been linked to excessive algae blooms.

Shawnie

I respectfully dissagree...

heres a thread that went around about it as well as an email from the company that makes bio spira

Don't Use Prime with Bio-Spira!

sirdarksol

Another disagreement: It entirely depends on the ammonia remover and your test. If you read your API Master Test Kit instructions, you are told that the ammonia test won't work with some water treatment products, and will with others. Different tests work well with different treatment products.

clinton1621

Good point, I should have been clearer with this, some tests will pick up nh4 (ammonias non toxic form ammonium) and some wont, some only pick up nh3 (toxic ammonia) so it depends on what brand and type of test you use.... most freshwater test kits measure both however and thats why API says the test wont "work" because you get a ammonia reading of say 2 whether its 2ppm ammonium or 2ppm ammonia

Alessa

I respectfully disagree as well.

most (if not all) of the cases of people that have used "certain types of ammonia removers" (not prime) have interfered or interrupted their cycle. Mostly because things like certain types of "ammo chips" physically absorb ammonia and do not convert it to a non-toxic form...

clinton1621

Zeolite, which is what ammo-chips and other ammonia absorbers use does not destroy ammonia though, it basically does the same thing as prime and every other ammonia treater out there.... you cant destroy ammonia unless its used as a food source (by bacteria), its a stable compound, zeolite is ion charged to "hold" ammonia by attracting it to the opposite charge... it is still in the water and will still feed true autotrophic bacteria, its just no longer "free" to be in open water so the bacteria must feed directly off the zeolite to get any ammonia... so if you put it in the filter in direct contact with your other media then the bacteria will still feed off of it. One huge drawback with zeolite however is that any level of salt present in the tank will cause it to release the ammonia its "holding" and recharge its ion exchange as it uptakes the salt from the water... if there is more salt in the water than it needs to absorb to recharge itself then it will cease to absorb ammonia which is why is should not be used in saltwater tanks, or any freshwater tank that has any level of salt present in the water.

clinton1621

I researched this, and thanks for the info =)

Bio Spira uses true autotrophic bacteria (one of the only cycling products that actually does) the problem with using any ammonia "locker" or absorber
with this is because of the refridgeration used to keep it alive, it slows down the bacterias metabolism... then when you put it in a warm environment (your tank) it is starved and needs high levels of free ammonia (NH3) to reproduce sufficiently

Alessa

didnt you mention that those ammonia blocker/remover products dont actually absorb the ammonia?

clinton1621

They dont... read the post above about how zeolite works... Bio-Spira requires free ammonia in the water because its not seeded in the filter media initially, its dispersed through out the tank water and not concentrated in the filter where the bacteria eventually settle