serious puffer problem

[Pufferpunk]

Also nitrite & nitrate & God knows what else!

[sstimac]

haha. yes i do rinse them. I have been keeping aquariums for ten or so years.
Here's an update. I did a 50% partial before bed last night. And took a piece of foam out of an established aquarium of mine and placed that in one of my filters. I decided to only do a 50% because I monitored the levels over the course of three hours and there was no increase. Throughout the day the levels were doubling every 2 hours or so. When I went to bed last night the ammonia level was .5ppm.
This morning the level was .5ppm. No increase. When I get out of class today I will do another 50% and add some stress zyme. That should bring the level down to .25ppm. The bio filter should be able to handle that. If after a day I don't see a decrease I'll do another partial to lower it. Of course I'll be testing several times a day for the next week or so, but I do believe that it's coming under control. The turgidus seems to be doing much better as well.

[gagned]

I would definitely stop using ammo lock. I had picked up a bottle of it when I first started in the hobby, and after I introduced it into my tank, I ended up having the same problem (ever increasing ammonia levels). I couldn't understand why, so I went to ammo locks web page, and according to the company, it can totally throw off your ammonia test results. I switched to prime and never had that problem again.

Dan

[Phaedrus]

Actually, prime can throw off certain types of test kits as well.

From the prime FAQ:

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.

Q: How does Prime make a difference in reducing Nitrates?

A: The detoxification of nitrite and nitrate by Prime (when used at elevated levels) is not well understood from a mechanistic standpoint. The most likely explanation is that the nitrite and nitrate is removed in a manner similar to the way ammonia is removed; i.e. it is bound and held in a inert state until such time that bacteria in the biological filter are able to take a hold of it, break it apart and use it. Two other possible scenarios are reduction to nitrogen (N2) gas or conversion into a benign organic nitrogen compound.

I wish we had some more "concrete" explanation, but the end result is the same, it does actually detoxify nitrite and nitrate. This was unexpected chemically and thus initially we were not even aware of this, however we received numerous reports from customers stating that when they overdosed with Prime they were able to reduce or eliminate the high death rates they experienced when their nitrite and nitrate levels were high. We have received enough reports to date to ensure that this is no fluke and is in fact a verifiable function of the product.

Prime is very useful because it can help detoxify the ammonia/nitrite/nitrate present without witholding it from your bacterial colony.

[gagned]

True enough Phaedrus... I probably should have clarified that in my post. For some reason though, the one time I used Ammo Lock, my readings went through the roof (5 ppm). I've never had a reading like that using Prime.

Dan

[Phaedrus]

Depends on the type of test kits used, for instance, I use a nutrafin test kit, and it will just turn brown if prime has just been added to the water.