I was never a big fan of using colorants for the liquid used in computer water cooling setups, but still from time to time I do make the mistake of going for a colorant or colored liquid just because it does look good with transparent tubing. The next time when it comes for maintenance of the water cooling setup or for an upgrade I one more am not happy that I did make that decision, so no more colored liquids or colorants. If you want color, then just go for a colored tubing instead of colored liquid, much safer and still good looking if you are looking for a themed water cooling setup...
Up until a few days ago I was using red colored coolant on my Watercooled AMD PC setup before deciding to upgrade it to Intel. When I was building it a couple of years ago I wanted it to be thematic with a motherboard that had red accents and transparent tubing with a nice looking deep red liquid in them.
The coolant was precolored and it looked really nice, not leaving any residue or staining the bottle it came with, so I hoped that it will be the same when I put it inside the water cooling loop. I was very wrong with that assumption of course and while I hoped I will not be wrong, I still had my suspicions that I will be sorry later on. Take a look at the picture of the tubing after I have removed the cooling liquid from it. Originally I have used transparent tubing, but it was colored in red already and in red that is really hard to be cleaned.
The other problem is that apart from the red color there was some residue from the colorant that covered the fittings as well and that can be a cause for a possible leak at some point in time. It can be a problem for the O-rings as well that keep liquid from getting out of the water cooling setup.
The reddish residue from the colorant inside the liquid also colors things like the plexiglass top of the CPU water block and even the nickel plated copper plate of the block as well and is really hard to clean. The same goes for the radiator, but there it is really hard to see what is inside and copper radiators are usually not coated inside in order to have better thermal conductivity.
Residue from colorants can even cause serious trouble with the liquid flow in the water cooling setup if it builds up inside the fine channels that are usually found inside the CPU water block. It can significantly reduce the flow of liquid causing worse performance and even in some more extreme cases even lead to failure of the cooling system.
So just say no to colored cooling liquids or colorants for such if you are making a custom water cooled PC setup... it can save you a lot of trouble if you just go for a clear liquid with colored tubing if you still want color to make things look nicer and be styled in a specific color.
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