Hi Lisa :!:
Nice to hear from you again. Hope you've been keeping well love. 😀
Urea is not constructed of ammonia. It merely degrades into ammonia by the action of the enzyme Urease. It's actually very important and relevant to planted tanks.
CO(NH2)2 + H2O => H2NCOONH4 => 2NH3 + CO2
H2NCOONH4 (Ammonium Carbamate) is an unstable intermediate product that rapidly degrades to Ammonia and Carbon dioxide. Typically, because of the extreme rapidity of the reaction, the transformation of urea is normally written without Carbamate intermediate:
CO(NH2)2 + H2O => 2NH3 + CO2
Similar transformations occur with the death any organic matter. The intermediates of decay may be different in each case.
Sweat glands, for example cover most of the skin. They're especially dense on the forehead, face, palms, soles and armpits, and they secrete a slightly acidic, very dilute solutions of inorganic ions, mostly sodium, potassium, and chloride, as well as organic material such as lactic acid (CH3-CHOH-CO2H), some urea (CO(NH2)2) and glucose. The foul smell of body odor is due not only to the urea transformation to ammonia, but as well to secretions of the apocrine glands. The secretions themselves aren't foul but the bacteria that feed upon them degrade the contents of the apocrine fluids into foul-smelling products.
Microbiological decay of animal and plant protein, which are nitrogen based organic compounds, immediately results in ammonia. If you look at the construction of the amino acids that proteins are made up of, many have an NH2 subunit, which, during decay is easily turned into NH3. Many of the Amino Acids in plants are actually synthesized by adding NH3 to some organic acid. So the transformation from protein to NH3 is easy, and is an essential component of decay. The abundance of ammonia in combination of orther byproducts of decay causes the foul smells associated with decay at all levels, animal vegetable as well as microbial.
This is why it is so important from an algae standpoint to remove organic waste from a high light tank. Detritus, dead fish, proteins and even the sugars and other carbohydrates immediately attract the microbial decay which result in an increase in ammonia production. The ammonia production spike is one of the triggers, along with light energy used by algal spores.
Cheers,
Nice to hear from you again. Hope you've been keeping well love. 😀
Urea is not constructed of ammonia. It merely degrades into ammonia by the action of the enzyme Urease. It's actually very important and relevant to planted tanks.
CO(NH2)2 + H2O => H2NCOONH4 => 2NH3 + CO2
H2NCOONH4 (Ammonium Carbamate) is an unstable intermediate product that rapidly degrades to Ammonia and Carbon dioxide. Typically, because of the extreme rapidity of the reaction, the transformation of urea is normally written without Carbamate intermediate:
CO(NH2)2 + H2O => 2NH3 + CO2
Similar transformations occur with the death any organic matter. The intermediates of decay may be different in each case.
Sweat glands, for example cover most of the skin. They're especially dense on the forehead, face, palms, soles and armpits, and they secrete a slightly acidic, very dilute solutions of inorganic ions, mostly sodium, potassium, and chloride, as well as organic material such as lactic acid (CH3-CHOH-CO2H), some urea (CO(NH2)2) and glucose. The foul smell of body odor is due not only to the urea transformation to ammonia, but as well to secretions of the apocrine glands. The secretions themselves aren't foul but the bacteria that feed upon them degrade the contents of the apocrine fluids into foul-smelling products.
Microbiological decay of animal and plant protein, which are nitrogen based organic compounds, immediately results in ammonia. If you look at the construction of the amino acids that proteins are made up of, many have an NH2 subunit, which, during decay is easily turned into NH3. Many of the Amino Acids in plants are actually synthesized by adding NH3 to some organic acid. So the transformation from protein to NH3 is easy, and is an essential component of decay. The abundance of ammonia in combination of orther byproducts of decay causes the foul smells associated with decay at all levels, animal vegetable as well as microbial.
This is why it is so important from an algae standpoint to remove organic waste from a high light tank. Detritus, dead fish, proteins and even the sugars and other carbohydrates immediately attract the microbial decay which result in an increase in ammonia production. The ammonia production spike is one of the triggers, along with light energy used by algal spores.
Cheers,
Ya this is useful information ............................... 
will have to change template on all the pages though.
