Does your water have excess iron in it?

My parents have water that is fed by old iron pipes in their locality, and this leaves brown coatings in the kettle and shower nozzle. One of my mum's previous dishwashers took on a kind of gold tinge, on the stainless steel lining (excess iron in the water).

I fixed it by running the machine on the hottest cycle with a dishwasher cleaner (bottle of citric acid and/or sulphamic acid). Check your grocery store for something suitable: citric acid powder should also be available.

I hate to say this, but using those 'eco-friendly' detergents may actually be the cause of the problem. The top brands from the well-known companies, contain extra ingredients that combat machine corrosion, reduce overfoaming, improve the cleaning action, and stabilise certain chemical reactions.

What you are experiencing may be the lack of these certain ingredients.

It does sound like a water source issue. Are you on a well or municipal water? Any local construction lately? Noticing any new staining in other fixtures (helps to have a drippy faucet to notice that one).

Good thoughts. The water source is municipal and the piping in the home is all new PVC and 'flex' pipe - no copper, iron, etc. No other fixtures or appliances that touch the water are showing rust effects but I'm going to look into it further.
We bought a diff detergent yesterday and are going to try that as well.
I'm actually wondering if it could be some sort of oil or fluid that is part of the dishwasher that is somehow getting into the cycle? Possible???

I had the same problem with 7th generation detergent, finally determined it to be biological in nature. DW parts were coated badly below the water line - very nasty. During the cycle that stuff gets deposited on dishes and dries there. Do a couple of hot cycles, empty, with a bleach-based detergent to clean it up and switch to a different detergent.

Ew. You mean you were growing stuff? Baked on diatoms?

I recently started using Seventh Generation and noticed Dark stains on the edges of my Corelle white dishes I was really upset and than My Husband said it might be Detergent and guess what he is right! I went back to Cascade and all is good now and did not have to clean each plate with bar keepers friend yay!

MY new-ish BOSCH STARTED DOING THIS - all my whites are getting deeply stained. I use Costco brand detergent tablets. I bought a "dishwasher cleaner" thing that you put upsidedown in your dish rack, run on a hot cycle, and it still hasn't cleared up the problem. Anyone else have ideas?

I have a new Bosch dishwasher with Crystal Dry. I think it's the Crystal Dry that's doing this as the dishes I usually place over the Crystal unit seem to be the worst affected. Also, all my Corelle dishes and bowls are now chipped along the edges. Has anyone else experienced this? It never happened in my old dishwasher.