black flecks in aquamira

[jj]

Has anybody had this happen to them? I picked up a new box of aquamira the other day, before an overnighter, and refilled my dropper bottles as usual. Once out on the trail and at a water source, I discovered my bottle of part A had gone totally janky. I could barely squeeze out any drops, as if the liquid inside had thickened. When I popped off the dropper and poured some into the mixing bottle I found black flecks in the liquid and it seemed more viscous than usual. Since I was thirsty, I proceeded to mix it anyways and the highlighter yellow result gave me enough confidence to use it to purify, but it didnt resolve any questions about what actually happened here. The mix bottle had black flecks in it too at the end of the trip, however these could have been transferred when I poured in part A.

I suppose there are a few possibilities:

1. The inside of my dropper bottle degraded over time and contaminated the premix. However, I’m using black dropper bottles from litesmith, which seem to be well-regarded in the backpacking community, but maybe a year+ is too long to consistently store chemicals in them.

2. I rinsed the dropper bottles out before refilling, perhaps I didn’t allow enough time to dry and the leftover moisture caused a chemical reaction thickening and discoloring the fluid.

3. I accidentally refilled part A into my part B bottle, resulting in a chemical reaction which altered the viscosity and color, but since I rinsed the bottles first this seems unlikely.

4. bad batch of aquamira — seems very doubtful.

I have an unused set of the same dropper bottles and half of my new aquamira still remaining in its original container, I am going to fill up as usual and see if the same issue arises.

Whatchyall think? Ill report back when I have time to test the second batch.

[jj]

the answer is bottle degradation over time caused the plastic to slough off into the premix and clog the cap. will be swapping bottles every couple seasons now i guess.

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