I have been using black inks for years and years. I finally broke down and ordered three non-black inks... Pelikan 4001 Royal Blue, Visconti Turquoise and Private Reserve Dapne Blue, they arrived yesterday.... I have Noodlers Fire Fly on the way.... I like the Noodlers brown inks too... sigh.....
My name is Johnny I am an ink addict!

You are among friends here. I think I have inkspots before my very eyes.

Uh huh. That's the way it starts.

You begin thinking, "What do all these FPNutters need with so many inks? All you need is a black and a blue, maybe a red and a green for some flare."

Twelve months later you're looking at 30 bottles of ink with 3 more en route!

Is it bad to have too many inks open at a time, if you know it will take you a while to get through them all? (Even when you are careful to only leave the lid off for short periods of time?) I know Giovanni sells that antimicrobial stuff.. Is it really worth considering? (And how does it change the character of the ink?)

Matt, I'd never heard of living things colonizing bottled ink until I joined the FPN! Every report of "Stuff In The Bottle" on the FPN has come from people who live in climates that are usually moister than most of California. Even in Berkeley, I doubt you have much to be concerned about.

The only parts of California that qualify as "truly moist" and therefore highly likely to make SITB possible, from south to north, are the immediate coast of Monterey county from Big Sur State Park northward, all of Santa Cruz co., the immediate coast of San Mateo co., the parts of San Francisco along the Pacific Ocean and the Golden Gate (but not along the Bay), all of Marin co., the part of Sonoma co. west of the watershed to the west of highway 101, and all of Mendocino, Humboldt, Del Norte and Trinity counties. I would not put Alameda co., where Berkeley is, on that list. The areas around SF Bay can get summer fog, but they still aren't truly humid.

"My name is Johnny I am an ink addict!"

-As long as you're not drinking it.....

Enjoy your inks! If you don't like one bottle, trade it, sell it, give it away with a cheap pen to a novice,.....

You are in good company. :ph34r:

I think I see inkspots on my hands....

Hello, Johnny! I think you'll discover that no higher power can get you out of this now. Which is all right since this is about the most benign addiction I've ever had!

My latest ink fix arrived yesterday. It brings my total to 19 different colors, heavily weighted toward blues. I do have red, green, firefly, and blue ghost (Is this a color? <_< )

Hello, my name is Jim and I am an ink addict.

19? Just gettin' started. This week saw the arrival of #s 31 & 32, and that doesn't count samples or mixes, and I know there are plenty here who fly way past that. I know some who surpass the century mark !

But there's hope - you're off to a good start

I did a count recently and found that I had at least 25 bottles of ink . . . at the house. I have another three bottles at work. I think I missed a few bottles that are stored in the laundry room. I'm easily over 30. At least I spread the wealth. I picked up three bottles for a friend and set him up with a couple of nice daily user pens in addition to the other pens I have given him. He owns a nice Visconti that he uses everyday and was amazed at the simple Pilot Varisty and Hero 58.

obviously you have never met my wife!

Johnny,

You can count on assitance from this group. In helping to deepen your addiction, that is.

Hi, my name is weepstah, and I'm an ink addict.

Try Kcat's vial trade system.

It's like methadone for ink addicts. I found that while I liked the idea of multi colored inks, that I really load up my pens with them rarely. So now I have all I need for my fix and didn't spend $100 to get them.

My bottled inks are all blues, blacks, and blue-blacks, (oh and 1 firefly)

I would love to try the vial trade but I think I need to get something to trade first!

Tell me what youd' liek out of my list and I"ll send you some vials w/o having to trade. That at least would get you started!

'Whiskers:
I definitely trust your observation that SITB is often reported by people living in moist climates... but I would imagine that SITB comes from either: (1) A particular mix of a particular ink that is more succeptible to microbial growth; and/or (2) dipping a lot of things (including dirty things) into bottles, especially discharging a pen back into a bottle. Microbes are EVERYWHERE (just leave some fruit in a dish for a week or two). You're right that moisture plays a role in microbial growth (lack of water suppresses growth or cells, hence salted meats, honey, peanut butter (in this case oily), and grains surviving so long outside of the refrigerator. Wet them up a bit, and it's a different story. Ink is already wet, so I couldn't understand what a little more moisture would do.

This comes back to my original question (because I think my #2 point above is very important): how long can a bottle last before you get SITB? This makes me feel like 9 open bottles of ink (where I'm at right now) is probably the most I should have, until I end up halfway through some of the bottles...

Although, I still have my eyes on one of them Noodler's oranges!

I don't know about truly moist, but you can add Santa Clara county to the list of locations for SITB sighting.