Brown Water in just two weeks!
 

Well, I got dark brown water and it's only been two weeks since I first started. Lots of nasty little critters! LOL. I was using Algae Destroyer but I think it is only good for algae and nothing else. I guess I'll clean my system with something and then go to another type of stuff to kill things.

Currently Used:
--------------------
95% distilled water
5% water wetter
and 1/2 teaspoon Algae destroyer

Darn, and in a week I was going to re-do it all anyway with a new radiator. Oh well, I guess a little extra work won't kill me. With temps between 98-103 F I'm still happy.

Animal rather than vegeteble? Yikes!

The brown might be related to the water wetter. It's been known to cake your tubing with a chalky film. In my case it was a little more red than brown however.

I've given up completely on water wetter and am running glycol/water. Who knows how much performance I've lost however.

Yeah im pretty sure it is the water wetter... don't use it. I recommend 90% distilled with 10% antifreeze if all like metals, 25% AF if you have any aluminum in the loop. If you are hell bent on using a performance additive as well, get some Hy-per Lube.

Ha! I took some water out and looked at it but the water wasn't brown, and it didn't look lumpy or anything. So I guess it was just the tubes. It kind of freaked me out because just a day or so ago the tubes were just chalky looking and now they're dark brown. Within a week the whole system changes anyway so I'll leave it as-is until then. No more water wetter for me.

Thanks for the advice!

Sam,
I studied "Water Wetter" and other coolant additives for an S.A.E paper, and I can honest tell you it does promote bio-growth.

I had one small tank with just it and distilled water even turn "fuzzy"... no bull!

hard to kill this Water Wetter thing, I've been trying for 3 yrs now with no success at all
new entrants get the 'hot scoop' from their buddies, and it goes downhill from there
- it seems part of the difficulty is that as a supplier one's opinion is considered to be economically biased (i.e. dishonest)

Water Wetter does cause problems with some brands of vinyl tubing and not with others, I've had it both ways. I have also heard of it causing problems with acrylic topped water blocks (cracking around metal hose barb connections. This could also be caused by the different thermal expansion coefficients of metal barbs and plastic tops). I have not had this problem. The problem with some vinyl hose is probably due to small amounts of organic solvents in Water Wetter that attack some plastics. I've had no problems with Clearflex tubing and I assume that there would be no problems with Tygon tubing either. I continue use it because it helps prevent corrosion without greatly affecting the thermal properties of water, unlike glycol based antifreeze.

Is Zerex racing coolant a good choice?

yup, if you won't buy from . . .

What's THE best additive then?

You mean Swiftech? I would guess the only issue with the Swiftech product is that it has glycol in it. I think you had mentioned in a post that it was around 1% glycol - which totally changed my thinking on it (IMHO no performance impact at all with such a little bit of the stuff).
Racing Coolant, which I've used for a number of years now
(and in race bikes for much longer than that), seems to work fine. However, it was not formulated for watercooling PCs - but racing engines (duh!). Glycols are forbidden on the track as they are very slippery even in small quantity, and are hard to completely wash off a track - comes back every time there's a rainstorm. All that said, the inside of a racing engine is IMHO quite different from what we're doing. Temps are higher. Micro-boiling is an issue. Nobody cares if tubing stains. Water pumps can sometimes be gear-type, which means that long chain polymers get chopped up (well - eventually - engines likely come out long before that happens). Even without having to deal with freezing temps, I would guess that glycol would be attractive as a boil-over protection - but it's forbidden.

less than that even ...
http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/sho...6&postcount=61

Why is water wetter not good?

I've used automotive antifreeze in a system before (5 - 10%, can't remember exactly) and it left nasty white deposits inside the pump, eventually destroying it (it was a Hydor L30 though).

I've used waterwetter in the recommended 2% concentration and never had problems with algal bloom or deposits.

:shrug:

Wow, HydrX only has .1% Glycol? Might if I ask what the other active ingrediants are?

THERES a lot stuff out there that prob works wonders . here is a simple way to find out ... find a used water pump from a fish tank filter "drift store special" get a feet of tubes some copper tubing even pennies and use this to find out whats safe what works and it wont cost you anything .... let the thing grow weird stuff in it then find out what cleans well and what keeps it clean. i also own many water cooled motorcycle but never encounter all this problems . "i have not water cooled my pc yet but im sniffing around.

It's not the same problem.

i never said it was . distill water seem like a way to go but have some try to boil the water before using in to fill the system ?. this would kill any bacteria then add a light mix of regular anti freeze.