Foggy lamp after 3-4 runs with Molten Meditation tutorial.

[Daniel Sutter]

I followed the great and highly recommended recipe here:

http://www.moltenmeditation.com/lava.htm

Using a second hand Mathmos Astro lamp (red lava). It works great, but after 3-4 runs the water gets a bit cloudy (happened after changing the water 2 times already). Do you have any idea where the problem could lie?

Our tap water is "hard", meaning that there's a lot of Calcium in it (from the Swiss mountains)... could that be the reason? Or could it be the dish cleaner soap (it's standard, eco-friendly soap)?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Dan

[Alfred]

I've run into this problem on a couple lamps that I filtered because they wouldn't clear up. They're completely clear after filtering, but cloud up again over the next several runs. If I re-filter, the same thing happens again. I clean the filter using distilled water, so hard water shouldn't be an issue in this case.

[Metallica Man Trevor]

Distilled water is better to fill it with, Also the salt is known to cause the clouding,

[Daniel Sutter]

Thanks for your replies, guys! I'm definitely going to try distilled water with my next attempt.

So regular salt (sodlium chloride) is clearer than epson salt - or what do you suggest instead? Any experiences with Mathmos Astros and gylcerin or propylene glycol?