Chiller Maintenance

[reallybigtoad]

What's the best way to clean out a chiller internally? Vinegar?

How often should this be done?

thanks,
-todd

[luger]

Its funny i saw this thread because i was just going to start the same exact one.I have a aqualogic inline and the cooling has cut down alot in the last few days.I contacted kurt at aqualogic and he said to run a 25/75 mixture of bleach and water through chiller for a few hours to break up the coating that gathers inside.I am a little concerned to do that and was wondering if there was another way to do it.

[Shayn]

Bleach is fine you just will need to really flush out all residuals of the bleach before hooking the chiller back up to the system, I use bleachon some of my smaller protien skimmers, (the ones that cant be taken all the way apart) bleach does a good job of cleaning stuff where you cant get to it to scrub or agitate it!One other thing when i service my chiller i also take the cover of the unit off and used compressed air to blow out all the dust from the unit,(and it will be dusty thats the nature of any appliance that draws air in!) i notteced my chiller was running hotter than normal and after i blew it out and flushed it out it was fine. What i do is plumb a closed loop system in the chiller useing a mag-drive pump(mag-9) and turbo water pressure thru the chiller first with bleach then after 2 hrs of that i dump the soloution and flush the whols chiller and tubeing with fresh water and do the same run for a hour or so, i do this untill i cant smell any hint of bleach(it useully takes 4 flushes after the initial bleaching and 4 hours of time.

[reallybigtoad]

What about calcium deposits?

[Shayn]

well i havent had to deal with those problems yet, only thing inmy chillers titanium chamber was some small crustians things not really sure what they are but defenetly living.But for calcium u need to flush useing a white vinager & water soloution and do the same rinse it out till u can smell no hint of the vinegar! Also at what levels are you maintaning your calcium levels mine are at 500 and im haveing no signs of calcium biuld up except where the return from my calcium reactor feed back into the system, and also at my kalkwater top off feeds back into the sytem.

[reallybigtoad]

I've had the chiiler for about 4 years, never been cleaned.

I'm just guessing on the build up. Once I get the thing apart, i don't want to have to stop and ask questions.

Calcium and ALK levels are normal.

thanks,
-todd