Sick Algae Buildup

[airspirit]

You're looking for the yellow lysol fluid, and none of those pussified floral types. You'd be hard pressed to use the aerosol types in your cooling system, though if you can I'd like a picture or two!

Seriously, though, the yellow lysol is what you want, and it is also the cheapest stuff they sell.

[pakman]

I kind of like that potpouri smell in my watercooler...

[starbuck3733t]

Sweet. I'll have flush my components with *sol and hopefully it'll knock the very light green film off the insides of the tubing as well as out of my radiator. I'm pretty sure its inorganic stuff, as most of it was concentrated on the copper and brass parts of my system. I took the block apart yesterday and cleaned it to a brand-new copper shine again with ketchup!

[Brians256]

I'd have never thought of running lysol through an existing setup, but neat to see it work!

As for me, I must be entirely too lucky. I've got distilled water and waterwetter (actually a waterwetter clone) and nary a problem. On the other hand, I have an aluminum block (hand made, and I didn't have any copper stock), which means that galvanic corrosion is less likely. My cheapo vinyl tubing is still crystal clear after about a year of use with no maintenance.

Note to starbuck3733t: is that light-green film biological or inorganic? Sounds like you need some water additives to your distilled water mixture (I really hope you are using distilled water!).

[airspirit]

This will not help inorganic buildup at all. If that is the case, consider running dilute metal cleaner through your system. If it is scale buildup from hard water, try CLR. If it is just copper surface corrosion, then try Brasso brand cleaner (dilute, of course). Be sure to flush the hell out of your system after using these, and you WILL need to run a *sol flush after a water flush to clean the buildup that both of these will leave off of your tubing.

[starbuck3733t]

Considering that the amount of crap (seen in my what's this crap thread) accumulated in 4 days, I'm pretty sure its inorganic. 2nd reason is that the system only got light for maybe 4 hours out of the 4 days, otherwise it was 100% in the dark in my basement. The water was distilled from the grocery store. the only non distilled stuff I had was an ounce or so of city water in my reservior left from leak testing it (none of the other components had ever had city water in them)

[airspirit]

Try CLR or LimeAway and see if that helps. If it doesn't, you may need to run something like vinegar or brasso to clean out your pipes. I'm not sure about the vinegar, though ... might want to spot test that just incase.

[starbuck3733t]

I think vinegar was the reason that scrubbing my blocks out with ketchup worked as well as it did. Im kinda broke at the moment so the CLR/LimeAway/Whatever will have to wait till friday when I get paid. At least I Can work on putting my reservior back together after cracking it with an alcohol flush

[pHaestus]

hey airspirit would it be possible to get you to write this up as an article for the site? Would be a bit easier to disseminate the information at that point I would think.

[bikr]

Tomatos them selves are acidic , you can use catsup to clean a dirty copper pan , they used to do it at my middleschool to teach pH.

The vinegar helps though I'm sure.. I've been setting up a tank for my turtle "Frag" I've learned alot out algae and the like and think I have found a solution to keeping it at bay in w/c setups , If you have a big enough res to where you can add a bubbler into the res , you can ozonate and oxygynate <--sp the water , this keeps algae at bay, as the algae can't breathe oxygyn <--sp again..

This is the number one way to keep it bayed in my tank , and I don't see why it wouldn't work for tubes and res'.. --Bikr


p.s. this is just an idea if you think it sucks , think it out first , and then let me know your ideas opinions , if you're worried about getting air in the lines , dont' worry , just posistion the bubble wand above the intake.. --Bikr

[pHaestus]

doesn't ozonolysis produce free radicals? Maybe not the best thing for the long term flexibility of your hose (have you ever seen how a rubber band reacts to being in the sun for a long time) or the other organic compounds you may have in your system (glycol, water wetter).

[bikr]

wow , wasn't aware that glycol was organic , however , this shouldn't be any trouble for your tubing , I have ozonated drinking water that flows through tygon to my tap.. It's never had any trouble , we used tygon so we could see through it..

As for organic matter , it will nullify most anything organic in the water.. I do not however think this will have an effect on the heat transfer capabilities..

Another option is to use a UV filtration system , a closed UV product that the liquid passes through , it can kill up to 98% of all bacteria in the liquid at each pass..

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=20756

Like that.. --^

[Cova]

I would aviod running CLR through your system. I ran it through my last system to try and clean it out, and it made my pump develop a rattle (a ViaAqua 1300 that had run for a year without making a sound). It's possible that it was something other than the CLR that caused my rattle, or that CLR eats/reacts with some material only found in ViaAqua pumps, but I'd say be cautious and use at your own risk.

[fhorst]

Hi All,

Quite a long thread to read, but I guess i've gone through it all.

One thing not clear for me, it has to do with my own setup.

I have tygon and clearflex. my tygon stays nice clear, but my clearflex gets a "whitish-creamy-powdery thing" that appears in the tube's walls......

I don't get it.. Why does my Tygon stay clear?

I quess I need to use some "pinesol". Does anyone no a brand name e.g., Ive never heard of it in The Netherlands.


To prb123: UV lamps only work for about a year. They still may shine, but don't provide enough UV after one year.

[Dr. Jones]

I have a professor who is an enviromental engineer with a strong speciality in aquatic systems. I talked to him about this today and it's something right up his area of expertise.

He said (from what I can remember amongst all the scientific stuff he was saying) most bleach you buy has about 2-4% chlorine, which is what is really great at killing stuff. He said 1 ml of bleech per liter of water should be more than enough to keep everything dead inside your system. However that will cause a slightly acidic PH, which will have an impact on the metals, so you'd want to add a little bit of a base (don't remember which he said) to make the PH neutral.

He also said general purpose cleaners/disinfectants that don't have amonia might be an alternative.

Also, distilled water would work good, but only for a little while. Salt water would also work, but you'd have to watch and make sure it doesn't precipate inside the system (especially if your using a block like the cascade, with lots of narrow parts).

As for the antifreeze thing, the reason nothing grows in your car is that those temps hit around 300 degrees, which is enough to kill them. There are lots of 'little critters' that love to 'chow down' on that stuff, which has caused some huge enviromental problems at airports and other places. Many of those organisms also grow the best at 35 degrees C.

Just some info that might help some of you. If anyone has any other questions I'd be more than willing to ask him. He really knows about little forms of life that live in water.

[Cathar]

Was walking through the supermarket and noticed copper sulphate tablets. They are intended for "root control" of trees that have broken housing pipes.

The tablets are solid, when when mixed with water break down into a copper sulphate solution.

I guess the question is this:

Negative impacts (other than toxicity)?
Would it control nasties?
Thermal impact - I've seen some that that hypethesises that a copper sulphate solution may actually be better than straight water?

[winewood]

quoted by fhorst
I have tygon and clearflex. my tygon stays nice clear, but my clearflex gets a "whitish-creamy-powdery thing" that appears in the tube's walls......

Tygon does not absorb impurities as fast as non-medical grade tubing does. Tygon WILL turn, but at a much slower rate.

[Gooserider]

I know that in the past there has been discussion of trying to kill off the beasties with aquarium type UV sanitizer lights. Seems to me like there are several problems with these.

1. BIG - The things are big enough that it would be a serious hassle to get them inside the case for many setups.

2. OVERKILL - Even the smallest units seem to be rated at far higher flow rates than what we use in the typical WC system

3. EXPEN$IVE - At $80-100 U$D they seem rather dear in terms of the cost for the amount of performance help they provide - you can buy an awful lot of *sol for that kind of money.

4. Hookup hassles (need mains current) and heat input to cooling system.

As an alternative, has any one investigated using UV LED's? I'm not sure if they make them in the right wavelength, but Electronics Goldmine's latest paper sale flyer had a 'UV LED' listed that they caution against allowing skin / eye exposure when powered up.

If there are such LED's available, it would seem like they would be a much better alternative.

1. Easy to fit - I was thinking a short length of Cu or PVC pipe, drill holes in the side of it, stick the LED's in and seal with silicone or equivalent. This would reqire negligible space, be easy to hook up since all one would need would be an appropriate resistor and a connection to 5 or 12 VDC off the PSU. An LED only draws milliwatts, so there would also be no real problem with adding heat to the system.

2. Obviously an LED isn't going to have the killing power that a light bulb would have, but one could scale things with multiple LED's and get a kill potential appropriate to our actual flow rates.

3. LED's are pretty cheap, even in low number quantity, on the order of a dollar or so max. Likewise the resistors and the rest of the stuff that would be needed to do a hookup....

Has anyone tried this, or have a reason that it wouldn't work?

Gooserider

[Althornin]

three problems -
1) UV sanitation is based on UV intensity, which roughly correlates to power. With the low power draw of LED's, what kind of intensity can we get? refer to other thread for more info and a spreadsheet that calculates kill off (roughly, based on many assumptions).
2) all uv leds i have seen are not the right kind of UV
3) some tubing blocks UV (not insurmountable)


Previous Thread

[mad mikee]

I will admit I know nothing about this other than what I have read here.

The worst you can do is yell at me but maybe I'll learn some more stuff NOT to try in my system.

After opening up my machine to reorganize things, found big white blob in my res - (damn don't have a yuk smiley) . So came here and read this and found you guys don't have any miracles either. Found a general reference of things that destoy bacteria, thought I would pass it along and see if it shakes anything loose other than grumbles.killing stuff...

I haven't heard anyone mention the enzyme cleaners for drain buildup, would that be strong enough? Or something along that line?

I am new enough to this that I haven't had to deal w/ gunk in the rad yet. (hmm opens another window an googles rad cleaner - seems to all be high alkalie, how does that affect our stuff (plastics, and metals(yeah I know it sounds stupid but learned long time ago to ask stupid b4 assuming and doing stupid)).

Thanks for whatever comes from this - Let the haranguing begin.

[bikr]

I'm going to be conducting an experiment not on my w/c system but on my turtle tank , I know it's a far cry but algae growth in there is insane!! I am getting a broken Tap water sanitizer from my father , If this works out well I'll be able to get these cheap and if anyone is interested , i'll relay them to you at whatever they cost me , but anyway.. The unit uses water pressure from your line and fills up with water , I am going to be making a custom input and output on it and running it in a seperate loop from my filter.. It has a res that fills up with water and creates a turbine motion of water , the water in the turbine goes completely around the UV tube from bottom to top , I'm eliminating the filter at the top as I have a filter to do this for me and In a W/C setup , it'd be completely unneccisary , I don't suggest using LEDs , as they put out very minimal actual UV rays , --Josh

[prb123]

To prb123: UV lamps only work for about a year. They still may shine, but don't provide enough UV after one year.

All I know mine is that mine is about 2 1/2 years old and I still have crystal clear water in my turtle tank, granted my uv filter is overkill for the size of my tank so it may not be as powerful as when new but it is still effective.

[ItsSoLARGE]

Frankly, for home use, water and a scrub brush is probably your best option. Isopropyl alchohol (most any alchohol, really) can be used to kill algea (edit: actually, I suspect you are seeing cyanobacteria), however it precipitates proteins and DNA/RNA, leaving you wielding that scrub brush anyway.

Why do you think it's a cyanobacteria?

I haven't read through the whole thread but why hasn't alcohol been working?

[fhorst]

Originally posted by prb123
All I know mine is that mine is about 2 1/2 years old and I still have crystal clear water in my turtle tank, granted my uv filter is overkill for the size of my tank so it may not be as powerful as when new but it is still effective.

Well, if your system stays closed... there is most likely no algue left to grow ;-)

No, you are right, the UW is for a 500 galon pond... I don't think you have that much water in your system. Even if it is performing like a 05w w UV, it still will be enough to kill algue in a one galon system.

<edit> for got this question:
Your water stays clear, but is yor tubing also?
I'm still not sure that the white stuff on the walls of my tubing is algue..

[Gooserider]

I may have just answered my own question on the use of LED's for killing stuff... It doesn't appear to be feasible.

I just looked up the other thread where the UV stuff is discussed, and found that the desired wavelength for the killer rays is "UV-C",with a wavelength of ~250 - 300 nm.

I got started on this idea by a LED being offered in the latest Electronic Goldmine flyer which had all sorts of warnings about 'produces intense UV light, protect eyes and skin when using' and thought it was a useful looking item. Reviewing the specs for it however, I found that it only puts out in the 400-405nm range.

Since I was on the idea however, I went to the Globalspec website, which supposedly allows one to search by specs on multiple manufacturers catalogs. If I specified "UV LED", I got only units running in the 400+nm range, if I specified 250-300nm peak wavelength, I got only 'possible matches' that didn't spec a peak wavelength, but were only visible light LED's from other descriptions (Most annoying - I hate bogus matches...)

Thus it appears that my idea would not work due to the simple fact that nobody appears to make LED's the right wavelength.

The other objection mentioned was the question of light intensity put out by these LED's. I agree they wouldn't be as intense as a bulb, but given the incredible level of overkill even a 4W bulb seemed to give in a WC environment, I suspect that had the right LED's existed they would have been OK if I used several of them.

Gooserider