pepper smell in water, OK to use?

[astroboy]

A while ago I bought two 80 gallon food grade plastic barrels to mix and store water in. Unfortunately, they'd been used to ship peppers from Greece and the smell was enough to bring tears to your eyes if you're not a peppers fan. I left the barrels outside for a couple of years and now the smell is greatly reduced, still obvious but nothing overpowering at all.

 

Does anyone have a guess as to whether they'd be safe to use now? 

[BtmDweller]

My 50 gallon barrels had rotten olives sitting in them for a couple years. I cleaned them with bleach and rinsed thoroughly. I use bleach to wash filter socks as well. If I remember correctly there may have still been a faint odor when I had first used them. But very faint if at all.

[astroboy]

1 hour ago, BtmDweller said:

My 50 gallon barrels had rotten olives sitting in them for a couple years. I cleaned them with bleach and rinsed thoroughly. I use bleach to wash filter socks as well. If I remember correctly there may have still been a faint odor when I had first used them. But very faint if at all.

Sounds like we got our barrels from the same place. I don't want to even try to imagine what yours smelled like.

 

I used bleach and even put in a gallon of muriatic acid and 10 gallons of water and let them sit on their side for a few weeks, helped a bit but not too much. 

[BtmDweller]

Sounds like we got our barrels from the same place. I don't want to even try to imagine what yours smelled like.
 
I used bleach and even put in a gallon of muriatic acid and 10 gallons of water and let them sit on their side for a few weeks, helped a bit but not too much. 

Haha yeah. Yup rotting olives and all!! Sounds like you cleaned yours well and riser the heck out of them. Mine had no issues at all, but yeah I think a faint smell. But very very faint.

[astroboy]

This past week I put some frogspawn frags in a 10 gallon filled with salt water that had sat in the barrel for a week. They look fine, so I guess the concentration of disgusting pepper is low enough for me to use it in my display tank.

 

I was thinking yesterday about how I talked with Bob Fenner  about coral allelopathy after a WAMAS talk, and it occurred to me if corals could put up with each other's poisons more or less OK they shouldn't be put out by pepper smell. I'm very sorry to hear just now that he passed. He was the real deal. A gentleman and a scholar, those words describe him better than anything else. He'll be missed for a long long time by those who knew him and the reefing world in general.