Very strange problem in the loop!

[Fercho_2006]

Hi everyone!

About a month ago I finished building my watercooling system thanks to the help of many people in this forum.

Now I'm facing a very serious problem.. The color of the water in my loop started to change from UV green to yellow and particles (very thin almost like powder) started to appear. The first thing that came to my mind was galvanic corrosion, but I don't think it can happen as I'm not mixing copper parts with aluminum parts..

I'm using the D Tek Fuzion V2 with the provided barbs, Danger Den 680i Northbridge waterblock (MPC-680i) with the provided barbs, Thermochill PA 120.3 with EK High-Flow Fittings, Laing DDC w/ Petra'sTech DDCT-01s Top Combo with Petra's Tech provided barbs and Swiftech Micro Reservoir with the provided plastic barbs. The tubes are masterkleer.

For the loop I'm using distiled water with Petra'sTech "PT_Nuke" Concentrated Biocide and Feser View Active UV Dye (Green). Should I add something else?

I have taken some samples to send them to a laboratory to have them checked so I can know exactly what I'm dealing with. At first I thought it could have been the particles that come inside the rad (I haven't clean it to start with), but the loop started to get more and more yellow so today I simply decided to take all the water out and run clean water through it.

I have attached some pictures for you to take a look. Please forgive the crappiness of the iphone camera but my nikon fell 800 meters down a cliff in the last trekking I did.

I would really appreciate everyone to state their opinion and give me an idea of what I could do to fix this.

Thanks in advance.

By the way sorry for my english, it's not my first language.

PS: the pictures of the loop are already with clean water (with a little of green UV dye). Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of how yellow the loop was in the beginning.
PS2: the photo with the paper covered in yellow is what was left after I filtered all the water in the loop. Almost like a yellow powder.
PS3: I haven't used anticorrosive in my loop as I read here in the forum that water with biocide was more than enough. Should I use it?

[xVeinx]

Fesser warns that mixing other chemicals with their dye/coolant can result in a chemical reaction, of which this might be one case. I'm not sure how many people have been mixing these two ( I thought the uv dye was fairly new ), but that might be your problem. I'm always a little nervous of mixing fluids, etc. when I don't know the chemical composition. Try using just water and PT nuke for now (after cleaning the loop). If it doesn't come back, then you should be ok.

[Fercho_2006]

Thanks for your fast response xveinx! I'm going to take both chemicals to the lab to hace them checked too! What are the chances of getting algae if I don't use the biocide and only the uv dye?

[xVeinx]

The Biocide is copper II sulfate pentahydrate. The sulfate group could easily combine with something in the Fesser dye and would produce a yellowish precipitate, much like what you have...

[eXa]

My bet is simply on the UV dye...

[xVeinx]

The dye contains ethylene glycol, which is toxic and can be something of a biocide in and of itself. Assuming that you change the fluid or add fresh dye every so often, you might be ok. That somewhat depends on the concentration of the EG as well, but yeah.

[Fercho_2006]

Wow! Thanks to everyone for your fast response! I'll try to stick only with the uv dye and see what happens afterwards.

To KaptCrunch: i'm using uv light 24/7 but natural sunlight hits the loop for about an hour everyday.. Could that be a problem?

[71 (Bryan)]

you what you can do is, mix the dye and the pt nuke in a cup and if the same reaction happens again you'll know that it was the mixing of the two chemical that caused the problem and that the particles in your loop was salt (not the kind you put on your food)