Ilfotol wetting agent solution life and air bubbles

[ooze]

Hi,

Lately I've been getting edge marks due to air bubbles during development of 120 film. There are numerous threads in the APUG archive about potential solutions and one of them is the use of a couple of drops of wetting agent with the developer. Unfortunately, this doesn't work for me so far.

I've looked for the bubbles in my Jobo tank with SS reels, with and without film, and what I see is just like the picture in the thread below:
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

No matter how many drops of Ilfotol I added, the bubbles didn't go away. Of course I tried this numerous times, varying the speed of filling the tank, various agitation methods, and also various ways of tapping the tank onto the bench. It was a rare occasion that the bubbles disappeared completely. I've also tried both bottled and tap water without any marked difference.

Now I'm wondering whether my Ilfotol is past its effective life. I've had my bottle for about 5 years and the solution is cloudy. Ilford specs say that it lasts 3 years max. Do you know whether cloudiness of the wetting agent is an indication that it's time to discard it? Any ideas would be appreciated as it's very disappointing to see precious frames wasted.

Cheers

 

[tomalophicon]

In your situation, I'd get a new bottle. You'll know then whether it's the wetting agent or not.
I really don't know why they make the bottles so big!

 

[R gould]

Personally I would not add wetting agent to developer, certainly not to a one shot developer, most of them already have wetting agent in them, and too much is worse than too little,
Richard

 

[Rick A]

The only wetting agent that I know of that really works for breaking up bubbles in developer is Edwal LFN. You only need one drop of it in your developer for it to work, it prevents the bubbles from forming. Do not use any more than one drop.

 

[Роберт]

These type of problems are almost always related to the (tap-) water quality. With a good quality water (without many oxygen) you do not have bubbles during the development.
The tricky thing with a wetting agent is that it's very easily building foam which is even much worser then the problem itself.

 

[R gould]

Ooze,
If you want to use a wetting agent the best on the market, at least in Europe, is either the Rollei, or the Tetenal mirosol 2000, the only difference between the two is the tetenal is around £4.00 for 250 ml, and the Rollei is around £20.00, I use the tetenal for the final rinse, it is antistatic and you use only a few drops, so a bottle lasts a long time,
Richard

 

[Роберт]

The Rollei Super Wetting Agent (SWA) is very concentrated: 1+1000 - 1+2000 and works very well. So if you use 5x less this price is not any problem. But you need a 2ml syringe for it.
Maybe better then shipping also a lot of water around.

 

[Gerald C Koch]

The best way to get rid of air bubbles is to rap the tank sharply on a counter or table surface a couple of times. Unfportunately this is not a good idea with breakable plastic tanks.

 

[ooze]

The best way to get rid of air bubbles is to rap the tank sharply on a counter or table surface a couple of times. Unfportunately this is not a good idea with breakable plastic tanks.

According to my observations rapping it straight down doesn't help a lot. Rapping it at an angle several times removes quite a lot of bubbles, but not consistently.

 

[ooze]

I've most probably solved the air bubble problem for good. Whilst visually observing the bubble formation and various methods to dislodge them (open tank obviously), I realized that rapping the tank was very ineffective. Some bubbles just kept trapped in between the reel wires. By far the best method was twirling the reel; all bubbles were consistently dislodged after just a few turns. So today I bought a pair of Paterson tanks which have this twirling stick and developed two rolls of MF film, agitating by twirling. To my delight, they are just perfect!

By the way, Richard, thanks for the Tetenal Mirosol tip. I bought a bottle today and used it with the two rolls. The films have dried perfectly clean.

Cheers