If your fish tank contains a high concentration of ammonia, then you can use Seachem Prime to help provide immediately relief for your aquatic pets. To find out how to do so, you can check out this guide from Aquarium Blueprints?
What is considered to be a high ammonia level for a fish tank?
Ideally, you need to have zero presence of ammonia in your aquarium. This toxic compound will end up causing numerous health issues, including death. Therefore, even if your test kit shows that there is “only” 0.25 ppm ammonia in your tank water, that amount should be considered to be too high.
How to use Seachem Prime to detoxify and lower ammonia
If you have high amounts of ammonia, then Seachem Prime can help with fixing your issue. In order to do so, we recommend that you do the following:
1. We recommend doing a major water change as this will help dilute the ammonia concentration in your tank. Therefore, you should start by draining the tank water.
We suggest taking no more than 25% of the water volume per every water change. Doing more may cause a significant swing in water parameters, which may end up adding more stress for your fish who may already be stressed out due to the ammonia poisoning.
2. After draining your tank, you need to dose Seachem Prime directly to the tank water. We recommend adding in the amount based on how much volume the aquarium can hold.
In terms of dosage amount, you can add 5 mL, which is around a capful, for every 50 gallons (or 200 liters) of tank water. Don’t worry about overdosing as your fish should be safe even if you put in 5 times the recommend amount.
3. After dosing Prime into your tank, you can then start adding new water.
4. Next, we recommend that you let your tank sit for 24 hours.
5. After 24 hours have passed, use a testing kit to measure the ammonia level in your tank. It should be lower than what it was before you did the water change.
6. If your test kit still shows that there is at least 0.25 ppm of ammonia, then you can repeat the previous 5 steps over and over again.
7. If your ammonia level is extraordinarily high, then we recommend adding live bacterial products such as Seachem Stability along with live plants like Java Moss and Java Fern. These should help consume the ammonia from the water column.
To see how you can use the Seachem Prime water conditioner with Seachem Stability, you can follow these steps.
8. Once you are no longer getting any traces of ammonia levels in your test kit, then it should indicate that your biological filtration should now be strong enough to handle the bioload in your tank. Therefore, you can stop doing water changes and dosing Seachem Prime.
