Cleaning copper off equipment

Hey guys, I'm in the middle of cleaning some equipment from my quarantine tank. I have a powerhead that was used in my quarantine that contained copper. Is there a trick to cleaning off all the renaming copper out so I could reuse it in my display? Would water and soap be just fine?

 

Personally I wouldn't use the pump in a display to stay on the safe side, but if you must I think the following procedure would work, although I can't guarantee it.

Clean it off by scrubbing with soap/water, then soak in a detergent for at least 24 hours, and follow that up by soaking in vinegar for at least 24 hours. Finally, rinse with tap water.

In labs that research the effect of trace metal limitation on phytoplankton, they would soak containers in 1 M HCl rather than vinegar, but that is not available to hobbyists and I'm not sure what that would do to the pump! Using HCl, you could have confidence that the copper remaining would be on the order of nano molar or less, which would pose no problems in a reef tank. Using vinegar, I'm simply not sure.

 

+1 on keeping it as a QT only pump.

However, if you want to try cleaning it, I would soak it in vinegar and table salt (1 tsp. salt per cup of vinegar) for 12-24 hours.

 

Thanks for the replies! I also have a heater that I want to clean off. Would it be more troublesome compared to the powerhead?

 

I would think easier if it's a glass heater.

 

problem with copper is it leeches into the plastic, silicone, rocks etc and can definately cause problems down the line. I personally wouldnt use them, as the price of the pump is less expensive then having coral loss

 

It leaches into silicone, but not plastic. It is actually fairly straight forward to get copper off of plastics, as I described above. It is more difficult/ nearly impossible to get copper completely off of glass, like heaters.