Help me understand Seneye NH3 and NH4

[avocadoman]

The numbers and units don't make any sense to me.

Right now, my Seneye gives me the following data:

pH 7.96
Temp 25.8
NH3 0.037 ppm
NH4 19.73 ppb

My understanding is that at this pH the vast majority of the ammonia should be NH4. But 19 ppb is 0.019 ppm, which is less than the amount of NH3.

What do these numbers even mean?

 

[brandon429]

we need context

post a tank pic pls

am looking for details in the pic such as stocking rate, age of tank / post cycled at least / and surface area ratios against reef tanks that normally run at .00x nh3

yours is a bit high

that's why they have the trim setting feature, we could move you back into spec with a few more details in place. or, leave it where it's at now as your safety baseline, nbd. it's not like your tank is crashing

if it's off just a little, say .00x vs .0x don't concern much over that.

if you posted .0037 that would be dead in spec for a running, post-cycle reef tank stocked with fish and having the same rough live rock poundage as any other seneye reef showing the unison range measure.

 

[avocadoman]

Empty tank with sand and dry rock that's currently day 11 of cycling.

 

[brandon429]

excellent! it's rare to get seneye data on a cycling tank don't adjust anything yet. so glad to see this post

 

[gbroadbridge]

Seneye only measures NH3, the NH4 is calculated and is pretty much meaningless.

Just watch NH3.

 

[brandon429]

can you describe your initial readings, day one of the seneye vs now/changes if any>? what trending has it done

also, what kind of cycle

bottle bac and liquid ammonia? did your seneye ever show the initial ammonia input spike, then drop down after having added bottle bac??

we solely focus on the nh3 part, not the nh4. doesn't matter what that one says.

 

[avocadoman]

Seneye only measures NH3, the NH4 is calculated and is pretty much meaningless.

Just watch NH3.

That's fine, but I want to understand what these numbers are and where the error in my thinking is.

 

[brandon429]

we're still digging. that's not a terribly high rating for a newly cycled tank

need to know about those rises, drops etc. those changes matter if you've charted them on the seneye

how many days has the seneye been in place

 

[avocadoman]

can you describe your initial readings, day one of the seneye vs now/changes if any>? what trending has it done

also, what kind of cycle

bottle bac and liquid ammonia? did your seneye ever show the initial ammonia input spike, then drop down after having added bottle bac??

we solely focus on the nh3 part, not the nh4. doesn't matter what that one says.

Ill post all the details later tonight. I started with Reef Mature, but felt it wasn't going correctly, so I ended up adding some Dr Tims ammonia and some FritzZyme. I can give more data later.

 

[gbroadbridge]

That's fine, but I want to understand what these numbers are and where the error in my thinking is.

Last time I looked at the Seneye (I sold mine a while back), the NH4 was not even labelled in any unit.
I suggested to Seneye that they remove the meaningless NH4 number as they're not even open about the units or how they calculated it, but it must be based primarily on temperature and pH.

We know from other testing that the NH3 reading is accurate and as that is the Toxic ammonia it is all that is of concern.

More reading here:

Seneye Monitor and NH4

I bought a seneye monitor primarily for the par meter but since it came with a slide obviously I’m going to use it. I understand the difference between NH3 and NH4 but I’m not sure if NH4 should be zero as well. I’m pretty sure the seneye is calculating the NH4 and it doesn’t give units. This...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[brandon429]

your current levels are below toxicity thresholds for all animals we keep. what's key to discerning your setup context is if the levels were higher a few days ago, then sloped down to this as a sort of steady state

can't wait to see changes, nothing can be discerned until then. what a great thread.

seneyes have some slide prep requirements for precision tuning, those may not be in place / where you're reading now isn't bad at all, it's a tad high. I've seen some slightly higher we still used the meters accurately because they held at that rate even when under fish loading. we chose not to trim adjust them into .00x specs.

if they're reading wildly up then down agreed something physical may be off. what we should see is a high to slow slope and then some sort of holding phase ideally .00x but in some setups .0x ppm nh3.

* you have stewed a large pile of rocks in heated + fed and inoculated reef waters for the past eleven days, that timeframe alone matters bigtime in knowing when cycles are completed.

and with the seneye data we can calibrate the expected path of ammonia + the timeframe at hand compared to the ammonia line on a common cycling chart, to see if the seneye looks believable.

 

[avocadoman]

I added a pinch of food and a liter of Matrix on 2/21. I started the Reef Mature on 2/22. The Seneye went in on 2/24 and that's the first data you see. I'll walk through the NH4 graph because you can actually see the changes better on that one compared to the NH3 one.

The first big uptick you see is 2/25, a few days later. You can see from the pH graph that the pH went up the same day. Not sure why. The next big uptick is the evening of 2/26. I didn't do anything that day.

The next really big one, with the red exclamation point, is 2/27 when I removed most of the water and added the sand and dry rock. I also added some Tim's ammonia and decided to stop with the Reef Mature. I decided to add Tim's because the Seneye never registered higher than 0.001 of NH3. You can see easily see the increase on the NH3 graph here. It went from 0.001 to 0.036. You can see the uptick on the NH3 a day later when I put a little more Tim's ammonia in because my Salifert test kit was only showing 0.5 ppm. Then I didn't do much until 3/1 when I added a small (1 oz) dose of FritzZyme to the tank. I haven't done anything else since then.

Unfortunately my haphazard methods have deprived the world of seeing a nice classic cycling graph captured on Seneye. Sorry about that, but that isn't really what I was going for lol.

Regardless, my main question is just what this NH4 number even is, because I don't think it can be ppb as labeled on the site and in the app!

 

[avocadoman]

Updated NH3 and (self-calculated) TAN for those interested.

I received a reply from Seneye that didn't really explain anything.

 

[jda]

There is a deeper dive into the seneye in the chemistry forum... how it works, how some probably have baselined them incorrectly on this board (according to the resident chemist who is trustworthy), etc. It is worth a read if you use one.

 

[avocadoman]

There is a deeper dive into the seneye in the chemistry forum... how it works, how some probably have baselined them incorrectly on this board (according to the resident chemist who is trustworthy), etc. It is worth a read if you use one.

Yup, I have read that thread. Some great info in there. Still haven't seen any kind of explanation of where the NH4 number comes from or how it's supposed to make sense, because it doesn't.

 

[jda]

Yup, I have read that thread. Some great info in there. Still haven't seen any kind of explanation of where the NH4 number comes from or how it's supposed to make sense, because it doesn't.

I have been around since they were introduced and I still see no compelling reason to use one. You are stating some of the reasons that I feel this way - it is still kinda black box. It seems to get close, but I can do that without it. I know that this is a doochie answer, but we may never know how it works... it could just be a mathematical guess, since there are precise calculators out there that convert free into total given the pH. It is an enigma, right?

 

[avocadoman]

I have been around since they were introduced and I still see no compelling reason to use one. You are stating some of the reasons that I feel this way - it is still kinda black box. It seems to get close, but I can do that without it. I know that this is a doochie answer, but we may never know how it works... it could just be a mathematical guess, since there are precise calculators out there that convert free into total given the pH. It is an enigma, right?

I got it primarily to monitor my cycle, but also to use as a PAR meter and to have a connected way to monitor temp and ammonia.

I don't think I'll keep using the slides once I run out of the few that I bought.

 

[Garf]

I got it primarily to monitor my cycle, but also to use as a PAR meter and to have a connected way to monitor temp and ammonia.

I don't think I'll keep using the slides once I run out of the few that I bought.

If you've used the seneye pH facility to calculate Total ammonia, well, that's quite often off also it appears.