Using Prime

[unibob]

I use prime when acclimating fish shipments as when fish are shipped in bags full of oxygen, and the fish has been in bag for awhile, the minute you open bag the ammonia skyrockets.

Like Jordan stated it isn't needed in a established reef, and maybe only really new tanks or freshly setup QT tanks where bacteria may my be plentiful enough to break it down.


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[jroovers]

http://www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/Prime.html

I guess i read this wrong :

Typically, dechlorinators stop there, leaving an aquarium full of toxic ammonia! Seachem takes the necessary next step by including an ammonia binder to detoxify the ammonia produced in the reduction process.

I'm not sure how you interpreted that, but I take it to mean that Prime claims some dechlorinating agents (i.e. other water conditioners) leave you with treated water that is chlorine free but has ammonia in it. The ammonia then gets in your aquarium when you do a water change or top up (I'm assuming they mean this in the context of treating tap water). Prime claims it has a binder that renders ammonia inert after it has dechlorinated the water so when you add the water to your system, you can be confident there is no ammonia going in with it.

 

[Nonuser]

So if Prime Binds with Ammonia, If I dump some in my aquarium it will bind with the Ammonia that is present in my old water.

I'm not sure why the affects of Prime would not render ammonia inert whether it was in your tank or in a pail of replacement water?

 

[Pistol]

You shouldn't add prime to your aquarium, it will mess up your bio filtering process.

 

[Nonuser]

so how long does it take for the prime to not react to the water in the aquarium?

in fresh water tanks i used to dump it in and then refill with a python straight from the tap. 20 plus years never any deaths. and i kept some pretty sensitive fresh water fish

 

[jroovers]

So if Prime Binds with Ammonia, If I dump some in my aquarium it will bind with the Ammonia that is present in my old water.

I'm not sure why the affects of Prime would not render ammonia inert whether it was in your tank or in a pail of replacement water?

Because there isn't any ammonia in your tank to render inert - ammonia is essentially consumed instantaneously in your tank by bacteria and algae and broken down to nitrite and then to nitrate down the cycle, unless you are running some type of temporary QT, new tank, etc. that hasn't cycled or doesn't have adequate bio-filtration yet to facilitate this cycle. Or if something dies and your tank is crashing. You could maybe get some Prime binding to ammonia in your reef tank after adding, assuming it can beat bacteria and algae to the punch, I don't know which is faster, but it is sort of a moot point given that it already occurs naturally at an almost instantaneous rate.