Hello, I recently made a bucket of lime water. It was my first time doing such. My intention being to use it to dilute and PH adjust cows milk for feeding a foal.
So I cleaned out a white, food grade plastic bucket. I filled it to a certain level and added about 1 cup of hydrated agricultural lime (Calcium Hydroxide). I stirred the mixture vigorously several times with a dry debarked maple stick. After several hours of intermittent observation the water became noticeably clearer and the undissolved lime began to stratify out of the solution. Just under the surface was a very fine foamy looking film that would resurface if stirred.
So I left the pale of solution 24 hours and went back out to inspect the result. To my surprise there was a very thin, off white, crystalline, film across the entire top of the solution in the bucket. It made a very nice tinkling sound and broke when I pushed on it with my stirring stick. If I poked at the fragments they would now sink on edge to the bottom.
The material seamed to be somewhere between a crystalline sheet and a flexible adhesive film. It will form to the stirring stick once wetted.
Soooooo the big question on my mind. What is that stuff? I didn't read that as being part of the standard lime water saturation procedure. Can any of you experienced chemist types give me a likely scenario explaining the formation of this crystal film and what it is probable to be chemically?
My lime water has a crystal film on top, why did it do that?