Can Prime also be used to neutralize nitrogenous elements if necessary?

Just curious, can prime also be used to neutralize nitrogenous elements if necessary? Say someone is doing a fish in cycle or has a spike in ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates. I’ve gotten the impression that prime is good as a bandaid if you aren’t comfortable with the current parameters but cannot immediately perform a wc. Does prime itself displace oxygen in the water or is it the solid wastes prime temporarily neutralizes?

 

Just curious, can prime also be used to neutralize nitrogenous elements if necessary? Say someone is doing a fish in cycle or has a spike in ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates. I’ve gotten the impression that prime is good as a bandaid if you aren’t comfortable with the current parameters but cannot immediately perform a wc. Does prime itself displace oxygen in the water or is it the solid wastes prime temporarily neutralizes?

It takes an obscene amount of Prime to lower the amount of dissolved oxygen in a tank. If you have good surface agitation via filter output and/or an airstone running you don't really need to worry.

Prime will neutralize/detoxify ammonia and nitrite for about 24 hours in the event of a spike. You can use 5x the recommended dose of Prime to detoxify nitrite and still be ok.

 

It takes an obscene amount of Prime to lower the amount of dissolved oxygen in a tank. If you have good surface agitation via filter output and/or an airstone running you don't really need to worry.

Prime will neutralize/detoxify ammonia and nitrite for about 24 hours in the event of a spike. You can use 5x the recommended dose of Prime to detoxify nitrite and still be ok.

That’s what I had thought, and I know it advertises as such. I use it occasionally for that purpose. Thanks Bwood

 

Here is a thread with data showing a small amount of Prime being added that reduces oxygen to lethal levels.

Very odd fishless cycle parameters | Aquarium Nitrogen Cycle Forum | 520496

It is well known in water treatment and fisheries that dechlorinators can reduce oxygen once the chemicals being reduced have been exhausted.

The reason this is confusing to us fishkeepers is that in some cases you could have enough other things in the water so that the dechlorinator will reduce those as available. So large amounts of Prime could have no effect on oxygen. So if you have enough chlorine or other chemical in the water, they can get reduced leaving oxygen alone. But once you run out, the dechlorinator will start to reduce oxygen.

So there is no way to tell in advance how much Prime is 'safe'. It depends on what is in the water that can be reduced.

 

Here is a thread with data showing a small amount of Prime being added that reduces oxygen to lethal levels.

Very odd fishless cycle parameters | Aquarium Nitrogen Cycle Forum | 520496

It is well known in water treatment and fisheries that dechlorinators can reduce oxygen once the chemicals being reduced have been exhausted.

The reason this is confusing to us fishkeepers is that in some cases you could have enough other things in the water so that the dechlorinator will reduce those as available. So large amounts of Prime could have no effect on oxygen. So if you have enough chlorine or other chemical in the water, they can get reduced leaving oxygen alone. But once you run out, the dechlorinator will start to reduce oxygen.

So there is no way to tell in advance how much Prime is 'safe'. It depends on what is in the water that can be reduced.

Yeah, it seems like I recall that there is an issue with chloramine and dechlorinator. Like ...it uses an oxygen molecule and gives off an ammonia molecule....or something like that.

Don't quote me on that but I think there is an issue to consider somewhere along those lines.

 

Just curious, can prime also be used to neutralize nitrogenous elements if necessary? Say someone is doing a fish in cycle or has a spike in ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates. I’ve gotten the impression that prime is good as a bandaid if you aren’t comfortable with the current parameters but cannot immediately perform a wc. Does prime itself displace oxygen in the water or is it the solid wastes prime temporarily neutralizes?

Prime does nothing to detoxify ammonia. It is just a dechlorinator. Seachmen carefully says that Prime only detoxifies up to 1.0 ppm ammonia which is not toxic anyway. It's just pure false advertising. The practice of adding Prime needs to stop since it can directly kill fish by using up oxygen. I see it all the time. I have no idea how this got started.

Prime will directly displace oxygen if there is nothing else in the water (like chlorine) to chemically reduce.

 

Prime does nothing to detoxify ammonia. It is just a dechlorinator. Seachmen carefully says that Prime only detoxifies up to 1.0 ppm ammonia which is not toxic anyway. It's just pure false advertising. The practice of adding Prime needs to stop since it can directly kill fish by using up oxygen. I see it all the time. I have no idea how this got started.

Prime will directly displace oxygen if there is nothing else in the water (like chlorine) to chemically reduce.

Yea I believe the problem is that Prime directly advertises itself as a very safe detoxifier, not just of chlorine but ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. So if this is misleading and in fact dangerous I would like to know, I’m sure acidhugs would like to know as well as everyone else who uses the product. That’s all sorry didn’t mean to take attention away from OPs question.

 

Prime allegedly detoxifies ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. However there is no evidence that it can do any of that, and experiments have been done to suggest it does in fact definitely not do any of that. But the evidence is not concrete, so it's still up in the air.

A lot of confusion can often come from aquarists' view of how dangerous these nitrogenous compounds truly are. For example, aquarists often believe ammonia is so toxic that it has to be 0, and anything above 0.5ppm is deadly. This is not quite true. Ammonia as we often measure it is comprised of unionized ammonia and ammonium, at a balance depending on pH and temperature. The higher the pH and temperature, the more unionized ammonia there is - and evidence is that while unionized ammonia is deadly at very low concentrations, ammonium is not even at much higher concentrations. The long and short of it is, you can have an aquarium with a lot of total ammonia, say 4ppm or 8ppm or whatever, and the actual concentration of unionized ammonia is so low however that the fish are fine. Conversely, you can have a high pH, high temperature aquarium whereby even 0.5ppm total ammonia is deadly as it comprises enough unionized ammonia to well, be deadly. So some people will say, find apparent success in Prime detoxifying high ammonia, but in fact the Prime is not doing anything to detoxify the ammonia, just that the ammonia is not at a high enough level to be deadly. Just for a point of reference, 4ppm total ammonia at a pH of 7 and temperature of 26 Celcius is fine, as it only contains 0.024ppm unionized ammonia. So it's not like it is hard to achieve a temperature/pH combination where even higher total ammonia levels are fine.

As for deoxygenating a tank, yes even Prime admits that: https://seachem.zendesk.com/hc/en-u...FAQ-Is-it-possible-to-overdose-Seachem-Prime-. Apparently it can be problematic enough in some aquariums that they even recommend a half dose in such cases.

 

Well thank you guys. I appreciate the knowledge and friendliness.