Neptune Aquatics

Interesting topic on R2R about vinegar baths

Yikes. I have been using vinegar baths for years. I have had a couple of cases of impellers expanding and seizing powerheads. I had switched for other reasons to citric acid about a year ago (mostly because I had tons of it from bath products making supplies).
 
I read some of that and I recall sending an email to Roger Vitko about Tunze magnets bursting and rusting badly, had the same issue with Algae Free (they sent new replacements) and last, an MP10 wetside swelled a bit.
Tunze are supposed to be encapsulated in epoxy and that would make me think cleaning them in vinegar was ok.
Algae Free and Ecotech are basically sealed in plastic, ABS?
I had a posting about a non working Red Dragon and some of the reply was not to let the pumps soaking in vinegar for extended periods of time because the epoxy could be damaged by the acid. Nowhere in the reply it was mentioned that the plastic sheeting of the power cord could be the culprit to early pump failure. Now by reading on the vinegar/plastic issue, wonder why it has not been widely published on the forums about the potential hazard (current leak) and of course, pump failure.
I must add that I normally soaked pumps in vinegar only, magnets I would just scrub.
 
I'd been following it on R2R, but good to post here as well. I've been using citric acid for the past couple years because I find that it works better than vinegar and because I really hate the smell of vinegar. On a per amount of stuff dissolved I worked it out as cheaper as well, at least at the time.
I've been mixing my citric acid much stronger than that article advises. It will grow stuff if left out on the counter, but I haven't had any issues with it if kept in the refrigerator. It does work much better warm, so I take the jar out, stick in in the microwave for 60 seconds, clean my parts off, and put it back in the fridge after. For larger parts I find putting the part in a ziplock bag with enough acid to cover it and then burping the air out works well. You will periodically need to burp out the gas that is put off if you want to keep your part submerged.
 
For those of you switching from vinegar and wondering between muriatic acid (hydrochloric acid, HCl) and citric acid, go with citric acid. It is much MUCH safer to work with.

HCl is much more likely to burn you, your clothing, anything you accidentally splash it on. Also you really shouldn’t use it indoors (where our fish tanks are), the vapor is also very dangerous. It is commonly used in swimming pool chemistry, but that is a lot less handling- it’s just dumped into a huge amount of water, outside. Not how we clean equipment using it inside, dropping items in, putting your hands in to fish out components, carrying buckets around in the house, scrubbing with a brush, etc.

By comparison, citric acid is most often encountered in citrus fruit like oranges or as a natural foods additive.
 
JVU said:
For those of you switching from vinegar and wondering between muriatic acid (hydrochloric acid, HCl) and citric acid, go with citric acid. It is much MUCH safer to work with.

HCl is much more likely to burn you, your clothing, anything you accidentally splash it on. Also you really shouldn’t use it indoors (where our fish tanks are), the vapor is also very dangerous. It is commonly used in swimming pool chemistry, but that is a lot less handling- it’s just dumped into a huge amount of water, outside. Not how we clean equipment using it inside, dropping items in, putting your hands in to fish out components, carrying buckets around in the house, scrubbing with a brush, etc.

By comparison, citric acid is most often encountered in citrus fruit like oranges or as a natural foods additive.
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What concentration do you use?
 
Rostato said:
What concentration do you use?
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I’ve used the recommended 1 cup dry CA to 1 gallon water, which works out to about a 6% solution, but it’s pretty forgiving. You can experiment with more or less. I’ve seen people reporting using half as much or more than twice as much with good results.
 
Well. I got bit by vinegar finally. After using it for years this is what my spare wet side looked like today [emoji22][emoji22][emoji22]

What’s sad is that I have citric acid ready to go. The last vinegar bath was months ago and I was going to switch.

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BRS has their own branded stuff (repackaged from some bulk supplier), Tunze does as well, but Amazon gives you the widest variety of sizes and is by far the cheapest (depending upon brand)
 
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