Removing mineral salts buildups easily

Running a simple flood system. I get buildups of mineral salt residues from nutrient solutions in my reservoirs and on hoses, trays, etc. notably in tanks where I'm using Canna's PK-13-14 phophorus additive.

My grow is cramped and hard to get at the tanks to clean them out as they are under the flood trays. I've built in a valving and drain system out of lawn irrigation parts to avoid having to get under them.

When I need to dump my nutes (every 2 weeks), I just turn a couple knobs and hit the pumps, go have a coffee and when I come back, the tanks are drained and ready for fresh sauce mixing.

However, if I don't scrub out the tanks every few weeks, crusts of nute salts build up.

Anyone know of any chemical trickery to make the salts let go easily without a lot of scrub work?

Well Al B! I thought you were gonna tell us! What about Clearex?

Once I started getting boisterous with the chemical nutes and additives, I found it was best to use a clearing solution before harvest. I've used Clearex and FloraClean, and I think that they are mainly fructose and sucrose, so just sugars.

They also seem to help dissolve those built up salts, but I still have to use a brush to quickly clean them. Maybe letting them soak with Clearex for awhile, or some other solvent like that.

HTH

I'll put my two cents in here. Coffee maker manufacturers deal with this kind of problem too. People use thier tap water to make coffee and they get salt build up which clogs the coffee maker. They recommend using white vinegar.
You can buy a gallon for a couple bucks. Let the vinegar set in your resevoir for as long as you can. Then rinse it throughly.
I use it in my house to soak the salt buildup from my faucets and shower head as well. Makes them work like new faucets. Please pay my 2 cents. lol

Thanks for the suggestions, folks! And VV, I tried to jam 2c through the internet connection but it didn't work.

Vinegar sounds like the best solvent. Surely, the minerals in my tap water must have something to do with the salts forming crystals on the surfaces, but only the tanks where I'm running PK-13-14 really get crusty. Other tanks running different mixes (like that for the mother plants) don't get so crusty.

Next time I dump tanks, I'll put some full stregth vinegar in a spray bottle and apply it to the crusty stuff, see if that dissolves it.

Tanksabunch.

VictorVIcious said:

I'll put my two cents in here. Coffee maker manufacturers deal with this kind of problem too. People use thier tap water to make coffee and they get salt build up which clogs the coffee maker. They recommend using white vinegar.
You can buy a gallon for a couple bucks. Let the vinegar set in your resevoir for as long as you can. Then rinse it throughly.
I use it in my house to soak the salt buildup from my faucets and shower head as well. Makes them work like new faucets. Please pay my 2 cents. lol

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Great to know. good looking out VV.

clearex works well for me

Has anyone heard of using orange koolaid to clean a coffee pot instead of vinegar? I have used it and it seems to work, but it needs to be perked through the coffee pot so maybe it is the heating action that makes it work. Anyway, try a piece of equipment and see if it comes clean. If it does, it would probably not flavor your res and tubbing with a pickle smell.

Did you try the white vinegar AL ? and did it work?

lol, I swear clearex and flora cleen are for cleaning your plants dude. I just tossed a clearex bottle but these are some expensive solvents if you are using them like 409. Seriously they are to flush your plant by preventing your plant from reuptaking nutes and feeding off themselves. On another note, why not CLR it! I have returned to mineral hydro, GH hardwater with plain tapwater and I am about to run into this, I am sure.

Any acid. It is nearly always carbonate precipitation that needs to be removed, put any acid on a carbonates and it immediattely effervses (fizzes). Just rinse it way after ward. Vinegar is just a mild acid. The deposits in coffee pots and such are just calcium based carbonates. Put both calcium and pottasium in a resrvoir and add some acid such as created by dying roots or CO2 or the acid relesesed by roots during budding and you have pottasium carbonates. Calcium carbonates are just soluble calcium turned to calcium carbonate by carbonic acid. Carbonc acid is just a product of CO2 and water.

I perked the orange koolaid through my system and ended up with orange marmalade weed...cleared out the salts too. J/K about the orange marmalade, I did not have my plants in the system when I ran it with koolaid, but the koolaid, unsweetened plain ol koolaid mixed with a packet for each gallon of water did stain the tubbing some but it removed all those nasty salts plugging up my system.

Try it, you'll like it.

I did not try the sweetened version of koolaid for this but if sugar in products like clearex and the like have sugar, it may work even better then plain Koolaid

Perhaps its the CITRIC ACID in the kool-aid that is the active ingredient that is doing the heavy lifting of the salt scale ? Gonna try straight citric acid ill keep you posted .

macdadster said:

Perhaps its the CITRIC ACID in the kool-aid that is the active ingredient that is doing the heavy lifting of the salt scale ? Gonna try straight citric acid ill keep you posted .

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Most of these people are dead now.