Purging a bunch of old carts - Lots of Gunk... Maybe Algae ?

[Nifty]

I'm 99.18% sure it isn't concentrated dye color based on how it interacted with water when I was flushing it. On my refill bottles I have some "caked" dried ink and it definitely has a different look / consistency from that.

Interesting idea to culture some of this stuff on a slice of cheese! If I notice it on any carts moving forward I'll definitely give this a try.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Since I am color blind, I can't tell if the color of the gunk in your yellow cartridge is similar to the color of the ink. If you find more gunk in another cartridge of a different color and the gunk was the same color as the one in your yellow cartridge, then that would also rule out the possibility of it being concentrated dye color.

 

[Nifty]

I'm pretty positive it isn't concentrated dye color. The consistency (kinda stringy and globby) and color (in this case darker) lean more toward algae or some other organic matter. Also, I've never seen dye inkjet ink become concentrated in a liquid medium.

 

[ghwellsjr]

The reason I'm wondering is that I recently took out some of my old virgin carts that I purchased on eBay over a year, maybe two years ago and most of the BCI-6Bk cartridges had what looked like a black deposit on the uncovered outlet ports. At first I thought it might have been pigment but when I took some of this material and deposited it on a dish and washed under a stream of tap water, it slowly dissolved and left a wake of black ink in the stream. Without any mechanical action, it eventually all washed away. However, I didn't see this effect for any of the other colors.