Nessler's reagent for Ammonia detection

[soumyadipta9]

About a month ago, after the last epidemic hit my tank I started thinking about getting test kits. But buying them wasn't easy obviously, being as damned expensive as they are. Then, while browsing through various forums on the subject, I was reminded (thanks to @Rohan's post in MAC) of Nessler's Reagent as the universal test for Ammonia.
Decided to give it shot. Even if it doesn't work I only lose, like, Rs 100 which is peanuts compared to the price of test kits..

Over the past month I have done quite a number of tests using Nessler's Reagent. Here's my findings so far....

Test samples:

Tank water-> No detection so far for either of my tanks

Keeping 1 Buenos Aires Tetra in 1 Gallon water-> Ammonia detected after roughly 1 day

Water in fish packet brought from Galiff-> Deep yellow coloration of solution after just 1 drop of the reagent, very high concentration of ammonia. Poor fish


***1 drop of Harpic in 10 ml water-> Precipitation <Harpic contains Ammonium Chloride>

From the tests it is clear that Nessler's definitely works for higher concentrations of ammonia. As for lower concentrations like 0.2-0.3 ppm, its hard to say. The only way to ascertain that will be by comparing the findings with a test kit or, better, by testing a solution with known concentration of Ammonia.

So, that was my experience with Nessler's Reagent. Has anybody else here tried it ?

[Rohan]

Seems like my lil research worked

Good work mate

[soumyadipta9]

Seems like my lil research worked

Yes it did.

[Rohan]

[SanamMarik]

Nice Find Rohan...Will try and update shortly as I would have bought ammo kit by nxt week...

[SanamMarik]

Also can pls share the info in detail on how to measure nd chk the level in which scale? Thanks a lot!!!

[Sourav Bhowmick]

Yes! You can use Nessler's reagent to detect low ammonia conc also. But you have to buy a colorimeter, micropipette you have to know Beer-Lambert's law, and a lots of calculation. Not at all cheap.

[Subha92]

About a month ago, after the last epidemic hit my tank I started thinking about getting test kits. But buying them wasn't easy obviously, being as damned expensive as they are. Then, while browsing through various forums on the subject, I was reminded (thanks to @Rohan's post in MAC) of Nessler's Reagent as the universal test for Ammonia.
Decided to give it shot. Even if it doesn't work I only lose, like, Rs 100 which is peanuts compared to the price of test kits..

Over the past month I have done quite a number of tests using Nessler's Reagent. Here's my findings so far....

Test samples:

Tank water-> No detection so far for either of my tanks

Keeping 1 Buenos Aires Tetra in 1 Gallon water-> Ammonia detected after roughly 1 day

Water in fish packet brought from Galiff-> Deep yellow coloration of solution after just 1 drop of the reagent, very high concentration of ammonia. Poor fish


***1 drop of Harpic in 10 ml water-> Precipitation <Harpic contains Ammonium Chloride>

From the tests it is clear that Nessler's definitely works for higher concentrations of ammonia. As for lower concentrations like 0.2-0.3 ppm, its hard to say. The only way to ascertain that will be by comparing the findings with a test kit or, better, by testing a solution with known concentration of Ammonia.

So, that was my experience with Nessler's Reagent. Has anybody else here tried it ?

Using Nessler's reagent to detect ammonia, is very hard as because the little differences from the control are not possible to be evaluated by our naked eyes. For doing so, you need a colorimeter or spectrophotometer, which seems to be quite expensive in compared to the test kit.

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