Do you Monitor it

[Aqua-Digital]

Do you monitor Ammonia in a mature system? Probably not?

We have long followed a path in this hobby that once you have cycled a tank ammonia is never an issue. I have had many a forum battle on this exact topic, but wait, isnt ammonia the first chain in the denitrifaction cycle? So it is being produced even though your tank is mature.

So what happens if you have been slightly over feeding? or a fish died while on holiday and was slowly consumed? You have not been monitoring ammonia so by the time that ammonia spike has irritated your fish gills then been broken down to the final stage about a week later to Nitrate you now test your nitrate and wonder why its risen? You can not have a nitrate spike without an ammonia spike sometime shortly before, the two are directly linked.

So why do we not monitor Ammonia to give us an early warning of impending Nitrate spikes which are far harder to deal with?

Ammonia is passed from the gills of fish in their urine, also rotting food and decaying plant matter are contributors of ammonia.

It exists in two forms in the aquarium and the first step is to understand the difference between ammonium NH4 and free ammonia NH3.

NH3 (ammonia) is a gas and sometimes called toxic or free ammonia. It is the unionised form of NH4. NH4 (ammonium) is a nontoxic salt it is the ionised form of ammonia. NH3 and NH4 together are often refered to as total ammonia nitrogen (TAN). So as you can see from above NH3 is the nasty toxic element that needs monitoring.

The seneye device only measures toxic free ammonia NH3 and the seneye connect appliaction allows you to look at free ammonia between 0.000ppm and 0.500ppm. The seneye.me website stores all the ammonia history from your device and displays the readings in ppm.

Ammonia test kits mostly measure TAN especially if they are marked as an NH3/NH4 test kit. The measurement is done by changing the pH of the water sample; you may have noticed how ammonia test kits normally have a small bottle marked harmfull corrosive. Using NH4 temperature and pH to accuratly work out how much NH3 is present is very very difficult click here to find out why.

PH and temperature have a great effect on the ratio (equalibrium) of NH3 to NH4. As pH changes upward more NH4 will turn into NH3 and vice versa. This is often a surprise to people but as an example a 1 point change in PH gives a 10x change in NH3 levels.

As the PH drops lower the the amount of NH3 gets lower and lower. If you look at the screen shot photo posted here you will see a spike in our maturing system where we purposefully lowered the pH, you will see at the exact same time there was a dip in ammonia, before both going back up.

This exercise alone shows how accurate and how important the Seneye system is at monitoring and reporting back the real time health of your biological system in your tank!



Why leave it to chance or waiting for a Nitrate spike when the Seneye Monitor can warn you way in advance so you can take appropriate action. NOTHING ELSE on the market can offer this, not to mention the built in PAR meter, temperature monitor, pH monitor, O2 display and level warning. ALL FOR $199!!!!

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