Just to add to my earlier post, for the first time in just over a year I really opened the system up. My system normally stays sealed to the point of holding a fair bit of pressure, and has only had the cap on the fill-tube (no res, just a T) opened about 6 times to add a small amount of coolant (you'll see how small soon). I have no idea where the coolant was going, I think there must have been tiny air-bubbles in the rad. Anyways, except for a tiny area for a few minutes only a few times a year, there is never fresh oxygen in contact with the coolant for anything to grow. To save you searching the previous page, this is all either Copper or Brass, Tygon tubing, and Distilled Water + WaterWetter.
Previous to this, I was never sure if my coolant was turning a kind of brownish pink, or if my tubing was getting stained. Draining the system into the sink revealed that it is the tubing, as my coolant that was originally pink has now gone clear. Attached is a picture I took right after draining the system into the sink (with the drain plugged). Yes, I shook/rotated/etc. the block, pump, and rad - that is ALL the coolant my system holds. My theory currently (until someone replies with a better one) is that with such a small volume of water-wetter in the system (about 3% of the volume you see in that sink) either it's coloring, or the active ingredients as well, were absorbed by the tubing and/or reacted to form the protective coating over the metals (the black layer that it was found to cause by previous coolant mixture tests - my block is soldered shut and I don't have the skill to reassemble it so I'm not going to look inside to find out).
Anyways - I'm currently rebuilding the system to put into my new computer system. Fresh coolant will be put in (I'm planning Aquafina + a bit of water-wetter again), I'm mostly done building an aluminum fan shroud (upgrade from my cerial-box-cardboard + electrical tape shroud-experiment-turned-permanent), and I just let the pump push a water + CLR mixture (very weak, I didn't measure) through for about an hour to try and clean it. The CLR mixture was light-yellow when I started, and light-green when I flushed it. There was also a fine black powder that had settled at the bottom of the sink. If anyone has ideas on how to easily remove a pink water-wetter stain I'd appreciate it, but since I plan on putting new water-wetter in in a few days and it'll probably just re-stain, it's not that important.
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