My buckets keep breaking

Plastic will and does have a use by date, even those plastic souls on your boots they'll start to disintegrate after a few years. Chemicals will speed up the process if there have been any in your bucket.

 

I will use @p608 idea and the idea about 2 buckets. Take one bucket cut it down to be maybe 6 inches tall, put a layer of sand in the bottom & set the bucket full of fittings in the "sand bucket".

I now know I was lucky to have this problem before serious cold weather. If the buckets didn't break and leak my water out I would have discovered my fitting were frozen into an ice cube.

 

I strap my buckets to the catwalk. 2 buckets one inside the other. They sit in a round fire ring looking piece of metal thats bolted to the catwalk. I just throw a bungie cord of them and go. No one has attempted to steal my dirty ol buckets lol.

I assume the plastic is being eaten away by the acid on your fittings? Are they food grade fittings? Y not just dry them and bag them. I have a set of dried/bagged stainless food grade fittings but a side box full of dirty ol work horse fittings that get washed bi annually lol