more dye

Lately I have had some problems with my black anodizing dye. I hadn't been getting a real black, I was getting dark gray. With the last thing I tried to anodize black I made two attempts but couldn't get anything darker than a medium gray even after a 45 minute soak. So I ordered more black. The stupid black dye is like $30, while every other color is $10. Since I was already ordering I also decided to try a new color, brown. I just got the dyes in the mail today, so I haven't tried brown yet.