Distilled water

[FroggtheCham]

Our city h2o is horrible. My family doesn't drink it from the tap with out a filter. It sticks strongly of chlorine; I can only imagine what's in it. Our neighboring city has had many health issues related to the h20 in this area, which are by standards, with in range of "safe" consumption. I don't even want to know the parameters they are using to consider safe. The beaches in this area are closed most of the summer due to high e-coli levels. Yuck. Rainwater here is too acidic, and with foundries in town, I don't trust what is picked up and deposited in the rainwater. I use tap h2o in my dripper, and distilled or filitered h20 in my mister and spray bottles. I wish I was in a location to say I had better options for h20, but I don't. All of my reptiles have done fine with this arrangement . I too am looking into a filtering system for the house so I don't have to depend on the store having enough stock for me, not to mention the cost. We should all move by Brad.

 

[cosmic charlie]

Because it rarely ever rains? I'm not saying it's a bad option if you get that much rain, but San Diego just doesn't.

no problem . do you get thunderstorms there? usually one 10 minute thunderstorm will overflow the barrel.

you have to remember the rain water is coming off of the roof so there is a huge surface area that the rain is being collected from.

I was in san diego once. do alot of the house has the spanish tile? do those houses have gutters?

 

[Brad Ramsey]

no problem . do you get thunderstorms there? usually one 10 minute thunderstorm will overflow the barrel.

you have to remember the rain water is coming off of the roof so there is a huge surface area that the rain is being collected from.

I was in san diego once. do alot of the house has the spanish tile? do those houses have gutters?

So the rain falls, hits the roof, goes down the gutter and into an outdoor barrel ... how much pollution does this water collect on that little journey?

-Brad

 

[lisagr07]

well at home i have access to RODI water, we have several aquariums and that's what we use in them..
i'm thinking that this water will be too "sterile" the DI unit will essentially remove all trace elements from the water.... after reading all of this i don't think that i want to suck all of the necessary elements from the water...

Distilled water doesn't sound like an option either, our tap water is full of "everything" according to my husband...

so is buying a Britta Filter what i need to do??? sounds like filtered water may be the best option for me and my chameleon....

thanks ,, lisa

 

[Olimpia]

I did read the link, but I don't know if the author is any more reliable than anyone else. Some of the things he/she said sounded a little obtuse, while others sounded intelligent so who knows. But like the link says, if there is no evidence for or against using DI water, then the subject -to me- seems unsettled, and iffy. There could be nothing wrong with it, but then again it could be having some unknown effect on our chams' bodies, so I'd rather not even bother to test that out.

I'm not a paranoid person or anything. But we've made it this far with the water we have, I don't think we need to make it super sterile. I think making everything sterile is only hurting you in the long run.

 

[Dave Weldon]

Howdy,

I don't have any distilled water to try this so would someone volunteer to put a drop of distilled water in one eye and a drop of tap water in their other eye and let us know if there is more stinginess with one or the other. Since we're talking about misting systems, I just realized that this may be an issue. That's one of the nice things about using a buffered saline or a contact lens solution when there is a need to rinse-out a chameleon's eye.

 

[summoner12]

I don't have distilled but I could use some of my RO water....

 

[Dave Weldon]

I don't have distilled but I could use some of my RO water....

Howdy Kevin,

That would be good to test too. Thanks!

 

[Marty]

FWIW, I've been using pure RO water in my frog collection for the last 10+ years. Ever since I started. I have some frogs that are probably around 8 years old that I raised from eggs. I have miniature orchids in those tanks and all tanks are heavily planted with small tropical plants and of course are heavily misted. Few of the benefits of using RO include....zero deposits when you overspray onto glass, zero chemicals from your tap water for your animals. Use tap water on glass for a month and you will be shocked how much crap ends up on it. RO cuts your maintenance by a huge factor.

Trust me when I tell you that I would not be recommending to use RO, if I didn't use it myself with great results. I don't operate on a premise of some hidden agenda and never would. I would not care if the misting system would work worse because you used tap water. If tap would be better, I'd recommend it. You'd just need to change tips more often. If you want - use tap water, but I just don't know why you would. Virtually every hobby uses RO water, aquaria, frogs, reptiles, birds, orchids, etc, etc...

interesting thing, few months ago I went to the homeopathic dr for a supplement regiment for myself (wife made me do it - don't trust the 'one a day' , anyhow, the Dr. told me to avoid drinking tap water and if possible to invest in an RO filter....of course, I have a couple of those already and I've always been using them for myself with no ill effects.

anyhow, I'd consider dart frogs to be much more sensitive then chameleons and if they can last for 8 years of misting with RO several times per day and look healthy and breed for me regularly, I'd consider that good enough to recommend to others. .... I bet any money that if I used rain from my area the frog would already be dead. Rain drops pick up all kinds of crap on the way down, then any crap from the roof and gutters - no thanks - not for my darts Anyhow, these posts about RO being bad or not bad pop up all the time on various forums....mainly because of urban legends that if you drink RO it will leach minerals from your body and you will die - very scary !!! ya, maybe if you drink 20 gal per day for 3 weeks and you don't eat anything, sure! ...gotta run, my 3 year old is interfering with my access to the keyboard

 

[summoner12]

I have read over the posts about water and I was wondering why more people don't use rain water.

I have a 50 gal barrel that I use to catch rain off the roof for my orchids. I would think rain water would be best for the little guys.

I tested my rain water and the ph was around 6-7 so not that bad.

I had written a reply to this post and just realized I never posted it...

My general thoughts on using rain water is, that you still need to filter your rain run off water... PH is not telling you that you have clean water. It is telling you on a scale of 1-14 how acidic or alkali a substance is. There can be allllll kinds of stuff in rain water run off. Anyone who lives in the LA area can attest to how beautiful it is after a rain fall... all the crap floating in the air is removed during the rain..... where do you think it goes? gets stuck in the rain water, falls to the ground and goes down the drain and out into the ocean. Yes, this is LA... high concentration of people, cars, industry and due to our mountains, all this air pollution builds up. But, that doesn't mean there isn't air pollution in other places of the world that don't have our similar circumstances.

I would not recommend drinking rain run off without filtering it, heavily.

 

[Olimpia]

That's fair enough, you've had lot of great experience using it, which is fantastic. I never assumed you recommend RO water because of some evil plan or something!

Regardless of what the myths our there are, on a more practical level, it's way too expensive for me (as a student) to invest over $100 on something to filter water. I might at some point in the future, but for right now whenever I have extra money it all goes towards feeders or cage upgrades. So for now I will have to do with my water filters and see what I do in the future.

By the way, Marty, I finally set up the system today and it's fantastic. I'm so glad I got the money together to finally get one, it's worth every cent. Now when I give my chameleons long showers with the mist I just want to play a CD of tropical noises, because it feels like being in Costa Rica Thanks for the help.

 

[summoner12]

Dave,

I took a drop of RO water and dropped it into my eye and didn't feel much of anything... a small tingle... a lot less than irritating than when I shower and get water in my eye.

 

[summoner12]

Thought this was interesting:

So, drinking eight {8} glasses (about 2 liters) of slightly to very hard water a day will provide your body with about 14 - 200 mg of calcium. That translates to a maximum of about 1.2% to 17% of the daily 1,000 to 1,200 mg of calcium your body requires. In that same 8 glasses of water you will be supplying your body with about the same percentage of your daily requirement of magnesium. One glass of milk, by comparison, contains about 300-350 mg of calcium - over twice as much as 8 glasses of hard water.

 

[eppcheck]

Water here in oregon taste great. I don't think the chameleons mind either. So, I don't use distilled water simply because it seems point less if my chams are perfectly healthy with non distilled. Location and source is everything with this decision.
sti
I think like a poster above said that the distilled water is recommended for the actual mist king, but has nothing to do with chams preference or health. Unless your local supply is hazardous and this will vary between location. So, distilled will work for some where it is pointless for others.