Floating sediment bottom of dev & fix containers

Hi all,

i'm a newbie at home darkroom stuff and would love some suggestions for possible answers.

i am about to develop some negs instead (so at least i'm doing something photo related!) and i've noticed at the bottom of my developer and fixer in the containers silvery dust or sediment on the bottom, or floating in the dev or fixer.

has that happened to anyone? (i made it fresh on the 11 march)

as a precaution i'm going to mix up some fresh dev, stop and fix so it doesn't stuff up my negs, but i'm curious as to why. (i'm storing them in old sports water containers whcih were washed out)

its just a coating of silvery looking things on the bottom of the deve (d-76) and fixer (an ilford one i can't remember which)

our school suggests getting rid of the d-76 after using once but i know we can reuse it a few more times, but fix and stop can be reused a few times as well.

You should not see sediment in any of your chemical containers. Only use clean containers without any scale build-up before filling them.

Using diluted D-76 as a one-shot developer eliminates sediment potential, improves the image by reducing highlight development, and increases sharpness & developer reliability.

It is possible to have light colored calcium type specs in D-76 after mixing. The few times this happened, I filtered out the suspended particles with a coffee filter. Not sure why you would see silver coated particles in your fix.

IF they're very crystalline looking - it's probably developer (or fix) that's come out of solution. One very likely reason for this is either a) mixing with hard water, or b) storing your chemicals in a cold place. Either will cause this to some degree. A solution to this would be to re-heat the container to approximately 38-45C or, 100-115F and agitate vigorously - but not in a way that will introduce air into the mixture (i.e. - don't splash).

First, D76 can be reused several times. It is "same" developer as Ilford ID11 and some other developers (Efke FR4 for example), and it can be considered as "universal" film developer. For example 1 liter working solution of ID11 can be used for developing 10 films, and it is sugested in developer instructions 10% longer developing after every film. For example if you make fresh developer and develop 1 film 10 minutes, for second film you need to develop it 11 minutes, third film 12 minutes etc... But, check D76 instructions for that. Fixers, stop baths and wetting agents are made to be reused.

Only if you make dilutions meant to be used only once, or developer which is manufactured to be used as "one shot" developer, then you can't reuse developer and after developing you must throw away developer and make fresh next time you develop film.

About particles: I only get black particles in my fixer. Never in developer or on developer bottle inside walls. And they built as black "coating" on inside walls of bottle in which fixer is. They don't influence fixing. These are residues of silver remaining after fixing. I just do next: After every processing I return fixer in bottle in a way that I put coffe filter into funel and pour fixer through filter back into bottle.

As for silver particles: See film if there is emulsion falling from film. If that is case, then it is film problem. If that is not case, I think you didn't mix developer properly. Make sure that all powder parts of developer are completely dissolved in water when mixing developer next time. Folow developer mixing instructions. You can even buy new bottle if you want to be sure, they are not expencive. For example I payer certified chemistry laboratorry bottle for 1 liter, brown, glass, 2 EURO (about 2,30USD).

And make sure there are no temperature differences of chemicals. For example make sure that if developer is 20 Celsious degrees, stop and fixer should be 18 to 24 degrees. Don't let developer to be 30 degrees or 10 degrees, fixer 40 or 5 degrees, water -10 degrees and like that...

But, I really can't figure out what silver coloured particle really could be...

Thanks everyone.

I should've mentioned i bought distilled water to mix my developer. i didn't want to leave anything to chance. I also had some dust get in my developer due to slack washing of the bucket i used to mix tje stuff, so before i bottled the stock solution back into the now old distilled water bottles i filtered everything with several coffee filters.

i will go and check my negs from last weekend that i used the working stock developer/