Greenish Tint/Murky Water

[turok_t]

Hey everyone, just wanted to seek your advice as I have been out of the watercooling gig for a few years now. I have an older rig that uses the following components:

1. Koolance i380 waterblock (nickel plated)
2. Alphacool triple rad monsta
3. EK reservoir with Laing D5 Vario pump
4. Mayhem white absorbent tubing
5. Mayhem XT-1 Nuke clear coolant (100ml coolant to 900ml distilled water)
6. Bitspower fittings

I have a single loop from CPU block to radiator to pump. I drained the loop completely and used vinegar/distilled water (30:70) to rinse and clean out my radiator for several hours and then flushed it all out with a few rounds of distilled water ensuring to remove all of the vinegar/distilled water solution. I then used Mayhem XT-1 clear coolant mixed with distilled water to fill in my loop again. Immediately, I can see that the water is very murky with a slight greenish tint. I think the coolant is causing the metals to react or is reacting with the metals itself but I don't know why. The XT-1 nuke is supposed to be compatible with copper and nickel plated and I'm not using any aluminum in my loop.

Here is a picture of it:


Any ideas why this is happening?

[turok_t]

After disassembling my entire system, here are some pictures. I did find some rusting (??maybe this is just the bare copper underneath??) in the radiator threads and on the Bitspower barbs (inside the barb and on the threads as well) and I'm not sure if this is the issue causing the murky water. I basically took these pictures of the radiator, waterblock and barbs/fittings right after I disassembled the system (without cleaning) to examine the parts:

[mongoled]

That looks like copper residue in the loop.

Im guessing that the vinegar/distilled water mixture that you circulated through the loop for several hours simply 'stripped' away a layer of copper from all exposed surfaces.

However, I would guess that somewhere in your loop you have residue that did not 'flush out' when you rinsed the loop.

As you have stripped the loop you need to go through each and every part and dissemble, then thoroughly clean everything.

Once everything is as clean as you can get it then using only distilled water, refill your loop and simply let it run for a few hours, then empty the loop, replace the with distilled water, rinse and repeat until the water stops getting discolored.

Im also guessing that the white absorbent tubing has copper residue on the inside tubing wall.

I would throw this tubing away and use some new tubing as getting such residue off the tubing is time consuming as it requires patience and its not worth the man hours IMHO.

I.e. you can clean the tubing with warm/hot soapy water, a small piece of cloth and a 'plunger' to wrap the cloth around while you push/pull it through the plastic tubing.

I used to have such issues when I used to use regular tubing but since moving to PETG tubing dont have these 'issues' any more (re-discoloration of water because of leeching from tubing)

Once you have done the above and verified that the distilled water stays clear would I then use the mixture (Mayhem XT-1 Nuke clear coolant (100ml coolant to 900ml distilled water).

If after using the mixture the water color becomes cloudy, you have an answer to your question.

Ive only ever used distilled water. The only time I saw some corrosion was when combining copper/nickel and a too high/concentrated level of silver (will explain after).

I mentioned silver because I had an issue once where I had a bitspower silver stop fitting sitting right before a copper radiator and right after the radiator was the nickel head of the waterblock.

The fitting that was right after the silver stop fitting got corroded, but not the others. I guessed that the high concentration level of the silver near the fitting along with having copper/nickle in the loop caused this.

My solution was to move the silver stop fitting so that it was somewhere else in the loop where it was not always in direct contact with the water in the loop.

Not had such an issue since ......