What has happened to my Fixer?

[Martin Aislabie]

I have just opened a "new" bottle of Idflord Hypam fixer and its cloudy.
I have had the bottle for a few months and keep the stuff in the Utility Room where the temperature is never too far from the rest of the house.
I filtered it and it kept the clear liquid.
It clears film OK
Have never had this happen before
Any ideas? :confused:
Thanks
Martin

 

[fschifano]

I've had that happen to an opened and old bottle of the same stuff. It continued to work, but its capacity was diminished. Eventually, even fixers go bad; the sulfur precipitates out and the solution becomes cloudy. You can also smell the sulfur. That "new" bottle of Hypam likely wasn't very new.

 

[dancqu]

That "new" bottle of Hypam likely wasn't very new.

I was using a Rapid fix for some time but it seemed to
weaken. I'm more off than on in the darkroom and my
volume of prints is small. So, I switched back to plain
unadulterated sodium thiosulfate. A quick, easy to
mix fix at film or print processing time. That dry
concentrate may never go bad. Dan