diy aquaponics inc | Aquaponics cycling and the case of the missing ammonia

diy aquaponics inc

The mystery began with a phone call late Friday.  A customer who had purchased one of our new bikes Kits ammonia in his system had added, but nothing registered on his ammonia test.  So he added more and retested.  Still nothing.  After repeating this a few more times, he dumped in the whole bag of powdered ammonia … and still there was no trace of ammonia by his test.

API freshwater aquarium Master Test Kit

So he called us.  Ive listened sympathetically, but between you and me the word "impossible" definitely runs through my head was.  I told him we would look into it and to get back to him.  My next step was to grab my test kit and some ammonia, independently of the ammonia in a glass and test.  Really not!  No ammonia!  Perhaps, the party had "expired", although that certainly was hard to fathom.  It was more likely that the test kit has expired, so I decided to test the clear ammonia which we had used for previously cycling experiments in our aquaponics systems.  Again, no ammonia.  I clearly had a bad test kit, so I opened a new kit.  The same results!

Now I had two batches of ammonia which were testing negative for all ammonia, and/or two test kits that were not working.  The next step was to run to the hardware store and buying a new batch of clear ammonia.  The same results!

Time to call in the experts.  I sent an email to my friend, Dr. Wilson Lennard in Australia as ammonia can expired or property type questions.  He answered "no" and he was sorry, but he had no idea what was going on.

Next, I put both the dissolved powdered ammonia and the newly acquired clear ammonia in pots, got in the car and went to our local aquarium store and asked them to test.  The same results!

However, said that test kits often expire, so they are a new test kit for ammonia which had an expiration date in the future and tested with the withdrawn.  The same results!

So now were the aquarium guys so amazed when I was and Im beginning to think there was a kind of cosmic oddity previous ammonia and a black hole in my town.  Ironically, on our community site at the same time was a post by someone using powdered ammonia from one of our bikes kits from the very same party of ammonia which we were testing and he had ammonia levels that were too high!

By this time it was pretty late on Saturday and everything that I had time to do before friends for dinner to meet had to compose and send an email to all of our customers bikes kit was to explain what going on.  Our first remember.  Depressing.

The first thing Monday morning Alan was on the internet and the phone finding a new source of powdered ammonia.  He is a 50 pound bag in Denver, and was back and back for lunch.  We tore open the bag, some dissolved in a Cup, and sure enough ... no ammonia!

Our kitchen during the crisis

Now we were on four batches of products that were supposed to be largely ammonia, and had used four test kits, and nothing registered ammonia.  We had a lunch and silent were depressed by our thoughts.

Then I had an idea.  I asked Alan, "what if we are overwhelming the test using a concentration too high?"   We both thought it was an utter long shot, but we were pretty much of the options at this point so what-the-heck.  I went back to my test notes for the clear ammonia and after figuring out how much I used to get up to 4 ppm (5 ml in 60 litres) calculated that a decrease of 8 cups water was right.  Alan in the drop, stirred and gave me a look that said "this is never going to work".  We ran the test and slowly but surely the most beautiful shade of green began to appear in the test tube!  We added a second drop to 8 cups of water and tested again, and the darker Green was!  Next step was to get the equivalent test for the powdered ammonia to do.  It worked so well!

Problem is solved.  We are reminded of the recall and learned a lesson that we wont soon forget.

I wonder how many of you knew what was going on along ...

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