Mouldy ink - why?

Factual Questions
1

I have a bottle of ink, which is maybe a couple of years old. It’s about half full. I use it most days.

Then: I went away for a couple of weeks, came back, and found that it had grown four or five little white mould spores.

This has never happened before. I always thought ink was good until you finished the bottle. Why has this suddenly happened? And how can I stop it happening in the future? Keep my ink in the fridge?

2

This was discussed in a Levenger catalog a few months ago (Levenger sells, among other things, ink and fountain pens.) They didn’t have much to say about preventing it, but they said moldy ink doesn’t perform well. It clogs the pen, and it can get lumpy.

Now you know everything I know about it, which isn’t much.

3

Was the ink Pelikan “Brilliant Green,” by any chance?

I had a moldy ink problem. I just picked the mold off and filled my pen with it, and I ended up with mold on my pen. I washed it out with a 1/3 ammonia solution and switched brands of ink, and the problem has not recurred.

So I recommend throwing the ink out. It’s only ever happened to me with that one bottle.

Here’s my panicky GQ thread..

4

Try adding a few drops of ammonia to prevent spoilage.

5

AskNott, Podkayne, Springears -

Thank you.

Podkayne,

No, it wasn’t Pelikan - it was olive green from a French manufacturer. (Maybe it’s something about green ink that makes it go mouldy?)

Also, apologies for not having searched the site before asking.

6

Although the OP was asking how to prevent mold from forming in ink, I just wanted to toss in here a bit about a Nature presentation of a few years ago on Fungus. Essentially, their point was that fungi can and will grow anyplace, any time, and if you think you can escape them, you can’t. They showed fungi growing on glass photographic lenses, on emulsion slides, on virtually anything you could think of. The spores last almost forever, and appear to need almost nothing to germinate and grow. When WW III or IV come and go, after a time, fungi will begin to emerge. It was a truly wonderful program and made the point powerfully and beautifully and firmly. Ink? Love it. Yum yum. Eat em up.