I’ve been slimed…help!

[BoomTown]

My chilling reservoir is getting slimy. The containers are typical, food grade plastic, the tubing is food grade plastic, and now, after about 2 months, all the wet surfaces are ‘slimy’, the chiller itself is copper tubing.

Any suggestions about how to deal with this? As in, get rid if the slime and prevent its return?

[NormandieStill]

Clean it?

Seriously... it's either bacterial film or algae. Scrub the surfaces you can reach and use bleach to clean those you can't.

And wear a mask as depending on your water temperature you make have bred yourself some legionnella and you don't want to inhale any of that.

[Tummydoc]

intermittent water exchange is the answer. Pool algicide might delay its development. Dont put bleach into the cooling reservoir and run it with bleach. The bleach will eventually erode the copper and solder in your shotgun and result in pinhole leaks. Dont ask me how I know that.... but it took about 6 months of running with bleach for the leaks to develop.

[Salt Must Flow]

Too many variables to determine what the cause of the slime is. If you recycle water to feed/cool your condensers then over time it can grow slime if the conditions exist to do so . If you use some sort of preservative AKA algaecide/fungicide and perhaps even if you have continual water exchange (rain water collection or well water replacement) it can stop it. Chemicals are not ideal. After 2 months of stagnant water it is not surprising that you have some slime depending on the quality of the water as well as the environment the water is contained.The exact source of the water, city water, well water, etc is in question. Too many missing variables.

[NZChris]

UV-C may be helpful for keeping your slime organisms at bay. Set up a lamp with a timer to give the nasties a regular blast.

[BlueSasquatch]

intermittent water exchange is the answer. Pool algicide might delay its development. Dont put bleach into the cooling reservoir and run it with bleach. The bleach will eventually erode the copper and solder in your shotgun and result in pinhole leaks. Dont ask me how I know that.... but it took about 6 months of running with bleach for the leaks to develop.

Oh man, just finished my first shotgun build and reading this almost drained the color from my face. Some hard-earned knowledge right here folks.