Sanitizing equipment??

[Its_cchan]

I broke down my display because I had  dinos, cleaned and wiped everything down with a citric acid solution, but I want to make sure all the bad stuff is completely eradicated, so I want to run a diluted citric acid solution through the whole system to make sure. 

Has anyone ran their system with a Citric acid solution? Meaning, have you just poured the citric acid powder into the di-water and ran it through the system for a couple of days? 
 

Any helpful guidance will be much appreciated 

[islandVib3s]

I doubt it will disinfect anything but it will clean it. If you want to disinfect it use regular bleach or spray down with hydrogen peroxide. 

[obrien.david.j]

My system for tanks is simple.   Fill with water from garden hose, pour in 1 gallon of muriatic acid (from home depot) if bad or I need it done quick.  Or pour in 1-2 gallons of white vinegar.   Citric acid would be fine too.   Turn on power head/pumps, let it run for ... as long as I'm interested.  Sometimes 1hr, sometimes couple of days.

THEN...  I drain, refill with garden hose, and do the same thing with a gallon of bleach.   I view this as the sterilization step.    Let pumps/power heads run hr, hrs, day.

Drain, garden hose rinse again.   Then i'm ready with a completely sparkling tank to start over again.

[obrien.david.j]

For example, April 24th - I sterilized one of my frag tanks.  Took about 3hrs.

I have two 50 gallon frag tanks plumbed in the garage.  I installed with bulk heads and valves to each, so I could easily disconnect, remove, and clean.

Tank grows Chaeto, and a few misc things... But grew bubble algae and got huge aptasia outbreak in overflow.   (I'm growing out a baby banggai in the black basket, feeding baby brine shrimp / BBS twice a day.   Nothing grows aptasia better than BBS.  Peppermint shrimp in the tank solve that, but they can't get to the overflow.)   So it was time to Nuke the Tank and start over.

50 gallon tank.   

• garden hose fill in driveway + 1 gallon of muriatic acid, power head, 1hr.   drain. 
• garden hose fill in driveway + 1 gallon bleach, power head, 1hr.  drain.
• scrub, garden hose rinse in driveway.  garden hose rinse again.  Dowel dry
• Reinstall, fill with salt water, reconnect to main system circulation loop.   
• done.  one sparkly new tank

Before, and ugly... Then After and clean