Gardening

None of the photos are loading for me...even when I visit slrpnk.net

It is likely bacterial growth. The inoculum most likely is coming in the water source. Although bacterial growth is inhibited by water treatment, there is always some there. It could also just be floating around in the air on dust particles. These bacteria a tough and ubiquitous in nature.

What likely happened - you had several competing species growing in the solution. Most were likely unicellular while this one likes to form a colony. It's likely in the same group that forms the dreaded white films on the top on aquariums. When you sterilized eveything, you eliminated the competition and this species was able to grow larger and faster.

So what to do - I personally would run it though a blender to break up the floaters before using it and otherwise ignore it. It doesn't harm anything so why fight it?

Hydrogen peroxide in the final solution (feels kinda wrong writing those two words together though) should be able to get rid of any mold.

H2O2, the extra oxygen reacts with anything organic in the solution, so it kills mold in the water and destroys bugs and bug eggs in soil.

Very useful, but not something you'd want to mix into pure fertiliser, I think.

Don't know how available it is though, it's sort of restricted, especially the stronger stuff. I used to buy 24% but now that store doesn't sell any anymore. Pharmacies only sell like 1.5%.to 3%. And that's sort of expensive then.

It's very easy to make bombs out of the stronger stuff... apparently.

You can try adding a tiny amount of bleach. Look up guidelines for disinfecting drinking water.

It's inevitable that something will start growing where suitable. You'd have to sterilize everything, including the air and the water supply. All you can do is minimize growth, e.g. by making the mix and using it within a few days, and cleaning the containers after use.

Have you tried boiling the water before use?

Also, you could try different methods to sterilize your equipment. Heat, alcohol, and acid are all different ways to sterilize, and if you're only using one method you can end up inadvertently selecting for hardier microbes. Scratches in plastic or a build up of calcium can end up providing a safe place for microbes to survive a rinsing/soaking sanitation method. The fertilizer itself or the water could be the source of your microbes as well.

What I would do is clean with vinegar for an hour or over night depending on how dilute the solution you use is, rinse with previously boiled water (make sure it's thoroughly rinsed before the next step do not mix bleach and vinegar unless you're prepared for nasty fumes), sanitize with bleach solution for 15+ minutes, then slosh and rinse with 70+% rubbing alcohol for a few minutes and let drip dry on a sanitized surface, cover any containers that aren't immediately going to be used with foil to let them completely dry out, but so particles can't fall in them.

The vinegar will help sanitize, but for this purpose it's mostly used to remove mineral deposits, so if there isn't any cloudy residue at all on your equipment, it might not be necessary.

You shouldn't need to do this every time, just on occasion. From then on, be sure to boil your water before use, or prepare your fertilizer at boiling or just under boiling temperatures if it won't degrade the fertilizer.

I personally don't know and hope you get an answer soon, but wow, what amazing pictures!

Time to start a mold garden

At least you know it’s not actually poison…