First, as an aside: I want to say THANK YOU to the various members whose posts I've been reading concerning the seasoning of a humidor. I'm on Day 8 of seasoning my humidor with the bowl of distilled water; I've got two calibrated hygrometers (one in the humidor, one in my coolerdoor) and everything's going really smooth. The overall chunk of information I've gotten from people on here since I signed up has been invaluable -- so thank you!

For the main part of my question: I have had a bowl of distilled water in my humidor since the day I got it (eight days ago). Every couple of days or so, I have taken a quick peek just to check the water level, which has visibly gone down -- as I can surmise, A Good Sign. (Cue angelic choir.)

I hadn't looked since Friday, and upon just checking now, I've noticed that the level is down even further, and there are little specks of black floating in the water. They're not gnats, and the house is by no means dusty or dirty to cause a massive influx of stuff to fly into the humidor and end up in the water.

I'm not concerned as in "!!!" but I'm just curious as to what this is. Has anyone encountered this before?
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I have not seen or heard of anything like this. However, without pictures it is hard to say. I would dump the water out and place a clean dish inside the humidor.

Even better, I would recommend using a sponge instead of a dish as the sponge has more surface area for releasing moisture.
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I use a shot glass with about 1/4 of a paper towel crumpled up in it and then fill it about 1/2 full of distilled water and I never have a problem with mold or anything else. It also release moisture more readily as there is a lot more surface area and edges exposed to the air. I would say get rid of the water with the black specks in it and try a different method. my line of thinking leads me to believe that water that just sits there like that will eventually grow mold in it. my method requires a little more work (IE: having to fill the shot glass more often) but the water never sits long enough to grow anything.

Good luck with your humidor. Pics would also help us to help you.
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Never heard of that either, it's distilled water not purified water right? Are the black specks solid or greasy, can you smear one between your thumb and index finger? This is a brand new humidor not a used one correct? I am obviously with Micheal on using a new clean sponge over anything else.
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I wondered about the dish vs. sponge thing. When I read this sticky thread:

http://www.cigarasylum.com/vb/showthread.php?t=620

the original poster spoke of the dish of distilled (yup, I did use distilled) water, so I went with that -- and during my sporadic peeks, this was not something that popped up instantly. My thinking (like Fordman) is that it might be mold; for the time being, I've dumped out the water and replaced it with a clean dish.

Here's the picture from just now:

Image

You can see the ring, obviously, and the slight flecks in the water.

At this point, the hygrometer's reading the RH that I want, but I wanted to give it another couple of days just to keep things good until I throw some Humidipaks in there. At this point, would dish vs. sponge even matter?

If this is truly mold, as I'm beginning to now think it might be, perhaps that would be the main caveat for NOT using the dish method.
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To answer your q, they're so small that I can't even really smear them -- or I smear them into nothing.
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Just curious did you wipe or vacuum out the humi before setting it up to season, could it be some kind of light dust or something in the box that when the lid gets closed "dropped" that some kind of debris falls and you only see it in the water not the bottom of the box?

Oh and you might want to look into beads over the boli paks, much more versatile as far as setting the RH you want, they last basically forever, no need to replace them every couple of months and several other reasons, you can find the link to them on CigarNut's sig line.
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Good question -- I didn't. And come to think of it, I did (once) do the "drop the lid" test as someone mentioned to see if I got the "whoosh" of a good seal versus the "wooden clang" from a crappy one. (Luckily, I got the whoosh. And now that I've typed that, it doesn't look/sound quite right.)

I thought about the beads, and will most likely order them -- unfortunately I have to wait a few days to spring for them, so the Humidipaks I've got are just for interim usage until then.
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If you weren't so far along already, i'd recommend a clean fresh from the package sponge in the bowl of water, but you're already almost there, so no need anymore.

As for the flecks, probably dust, possibly mold. There is a LOT of moisture around the bowl afterall.

Patience is the key to proper seasoning, and so far you seem to have done your homework and are well on your way. Hang in there.

Also as far as beads go, If you decide to go that route, I'd recommend the HCM beads if your environment is pretty stable, if you live somewhere with vast humidity swings from day to day and you open your humidor quite a bit, they just don't rebound fast enough (atleast they didn't for me). In that case, I'd suggest heartfelt beads (which I use). They are a little more maintenance, but work just as well.
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If you like the idea of Boveda packs, keep in mind that you can refill/recharge them... the process is basically the same as seasoning your humidor.

Put the packs in a Tupperware alongside a smaller container of distilled water and, over the course of a couple of weeks, the packs will absorb the distilled water until they're nice and floppy again. I let a small sandwich size Tupperware hold 2 Boveda packs and float in distilled water in a larger Tupperware, which seems to give plenty of surface area for the water.

Buy twice as many packs as your humidor needs and you can always have a set in the humidor and another either re-charging or ready to go. The only caveat is you're likely to over-charge the packs compared to new ones, so they won't be able to absorb moisture above their indicated RH at first. If you use 65% packs and aren't prone to spikes in RH, this shouldn't really be a problem.
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