Please don't serve distilled water to your snakes!

Some days ago I stumbled on a thread in which someone said it's ok to use distilled water as a regular drinking water for your snakes. I work at a watercooler company and have learned that distilled water is no good for regular use as drinking water. It washes out useful minerals and such from your body because this water has nothing in it but H2O molecules. It's actually quite 'agressive' in a way. It's known to be very bad to use for babies actually.

Water that's nearly distilled is used by alternative healers as a cleaning treatment for people whom need their body to be cleaned from 'intoxicating' left overs of the body processes, and even that's not considered really good by all 'western' trained meds. It's no good for the body functions and organs because the creature will have more severe and severe shortage of minerals and such. So drinking distilled water long term should better be avoided to my knowledge. I assume if this applies to human beings, it would be better to avoid serving it to your animals.

That was me and, yes I made a mistake. When I was responding to the other user's question I got it in my head that he meant bottled water even though he said distilled. I even used distilled in my answer...I just wasn't thinking straight. I guess we all have those days. :shrugs:

But yes, distilled water is bad, for the above stated reasons. And thank you for catching my mistake.

*blonde* distilled water...is tap water or spring water?

Distilled isnt tap or bottled per se. Its usually in gallon jugs labled "distilled". Its good for all kinds of stuff, but no drinking, plus it tastes gross.

What can be used?

If you can't use distilled is there a water that you can buy in gallon bottles, that is cheap. We have 18 snakes, and buying that reptisafe gets expensive. We use a bottle each week. Can you use the baby water, or the kind you have to have filled at walmart? Is it ok as long as it doesn't say "Distilled"?

I didn't want to use my tapwater because it has chlorine and stuff in it so i've been using like the Zephyrhills spring water or whatever other bottled water i buy (usually always Zephyrhills spring water) Is that ok? I think the spring water is ok am i correct? and would my tapwater be harmful to use? THanks

Great Information

Thanks for the information; I have been using "Drinking Water" Carbon filtered and Ozonated for Purity. I assume this is fine. I really have had no idea what to look for in water. Thanks again, Amanda

Filtered water like the kind that you get at walmart or the georcery store, or water bought in bottles that says spring or drinking water is fine to use. There are also some companies that put out water that has added minerals to help replace what is missing.

According to homiopathic medicine, Distilled water should be used as a way to clean unwanted chemicals out of the body and blood stream...yes, it can be used to clean out the trace of drugs...but shouldn't be used as a long term drinking water. Distilled water is produced by taking regular water and placing it in a pan, putting a plastic lid on top of it, and boiling the water. This causes the water to turn into steam, that then collects on the lid as condensation. After this happens, the water is then allowed to drip back down into the collection container (pan or new cup). The boiling and evaporation causes all the minerals to stay in the pan, so the water that drips back down is devoid of any kind of minerals or harmful additives.

xKGLVRx said:

If you can't use distilled is there a water that you can buy in gallon bottles, that is cheap. We have 18 snakes, and buying that reptisafe gets expensive. We use a bottle each week. Can you use the baby water, or the kind you have to have filled at walmart? Is it ok as long as it doesn't say "Distilled"?

Click to expand...

Just use tap water. If you really want guy gallons of water that's labeled drinking water or spring water. It's like 53¢ at walmart a gallon.

so the chlorine in the tapwater won't harm the snake??? i know for my fish i have to use dechlor in the water so it doesn't kill the fish and i thought maybe snakes would be sensitive to the chorine also

I would not use tap water.

It depends on where you live and what your water is like. As a general rule not a good idea, if you haven’t had it tested. You do not want to give them chlorine to your reptiles and some cities add fluoride and other things to the water. I have been using bottled for some time; it is not that expensive and worth the piece of mind.

This is most probably the simplest "problem" to over come. Most, if not all, tap water in America is extremely heavily chlorinated and left untreated can be potentially lethal to your reptiles (they simply cannot process the chemical).

Chlorine is activated by UVA light, however, it WILL evaporate through the water surface in darkness. Tap water is simply treated by leaving it in an open container overnight, depending on the volume you are now treating. A regular 5 Gallon bucket will evaporate enough chlorine in 2 nights to make it perfectly safe for your snakes.Keep it at room temperature, the warmer the better. If it is kept in a cool place it will take longer.

You will smell the difference after 2 nights, especially when you then smell a fresh poured glass of water from your faucet.

This is something the bottled water companies will not disclose openly, but it definitely displaces chlorine simply and it doesn't get much less expensive.

The simplest and most cost effective method for those with larger collections, plants, and fish tanks is to purchase an RO (Reverse Osmosis) unit for around $100-$200 depending on the 'output' level you choose. You can get anwhere from 5 gallons per day to 50 gallon per day units in that price range. Coral Life is the brand I use and that is sold in the pet store I work at. I use it for all my tanks (fresh and salt), potted plants, betta vases, bamboo, and my snakes.

Distilled water is pure water, no minerals or other garbage. It will actually pull nutrients and minerals from the animal or plants system. Which is basically what blue already said. RO water on the other and is force filtered through an osmotic membrane and doesn't remove everything, but gets many of the large moleculed pollutants from the water. It is mainly used for fish tanks to help avoid algae blooms, especially in saltwater tanks, but I have been using it for my snakes (with GSE added) for the last 3 years. If there were any negative affects from it, I think I would have noticed something by now.

D80

Tap Water

I've been using Repti-Safe. It gets ride of the chlorine and other bad things from tap water. If you only have a few snakes it works fine. But I have a few to many to buy a bottle of that each week. You can buy it at petsmart and petco.

xKGLVRx said:

I've been using Repti-Safe. It gets ride of the chlorine and other bad things from tap water. If you only have a few snakes it works fine. But I have a few to many to buy a bottle of that each week. You can buy it at petsmart and petco.

Click to expand...

You're doing something vastly wrong if you're going through a bottle a week. I've had my bottle for almost a year now and I've got 20 snakes. You do realize that you only need ONE drop per 8 ounces of water, right?

Joe said:

You're doing something vastly wrong if you're going through a bottle a week. I've had my bottle for almost a year now and I've got 20 snakes. You do realize that you only need ONE drop per 8 ounces of water, right?

Click to expand...

Maybe he changes water everyday? I dunno. Adding chemicals to water in order to remove chemicals, in my opinion isn't any better.

graffix said:

This is most probably the simplest "problem" to over come. Most, if not all, tap water in America is extremely heavily chlorinated and left untreated can be potentially lethal to your reptiles (they simply cannot process the chemical).

Click to expand...

I don't know about it being lethal per se as its only Chlorine ions, not Cl², but its not healthy by any means. No animal can process chlorine to the extent of the content in our water supply. And I've read some studies that raise serious questions to its use in public drinking water. I am convinced there is some other safer method to make drinking water safe. =P

If you want cheap water that is just filtered like you can buy in jugs why not just pay $20 for a faucet filter? For that cost you can get months upon months of filtered water.

Personally, the only water I buy for my family is pure spring water. Aquafina, Deja Blue, etc are all nothing more than filtered tap water from whatever municipality they're bottled at. As are most of the "drinking water" you can buy.

The tap water around here is heavily mineral laden, and in a few short weeks you have a calcium buildup in your pet bowls that is a dickens to get rid of without chemicals. Not to mention the stench of chlorine, chrorarmines, fluoride, and nitrates added. I don't even like to drink it for my morning vitamins.

On a side note, I think Americans are too passive and just sit back and let our government take care of our water supply, which is a thought that scares me personally. Why should I trust the town that sprays herbicide in a ditch with running water (against federal law as stated on the bottle), from delivering me "safe" drinking water?

Anyway..I've been considering getting an RO system in my home for my orchids. We've installed a water softener to deal with the insane mineral content in our water, as I mentioned before. And sodium ions in the water is generally not good for plants, much less orchids. Collecting rainwater is ok, but it does get tedious after a while.

Taceas said:

I don't know about it being lethal per se as its only Chlorine ions, not Cl², but its not healthy by any means. No animal can process chlorine to the extent of the content in our water supply. And I've read some studies that raise serious questions to its use in public drinking water. I am convinced there is some other safer method to make drinking water safe. =P

The tap water around here is heavily mineral laden, and in a few short weeks you have a calcium buildup in your pet bowls that is a dickens to get rid of without chemicals. Not to mention the stench of chlorine, chrorarmines, fluoride, and nitrates added. I don't even like to drink it for my morning vitamins.

Click to expand...

I would have to concur. I don't think the problem is the chlorine in the water, it's the other garbage that's in there that causes the problem. I changed to RO three years ago when I noticed the tap water I was giving my plants was leaving a brownish/yellowish/whitish crusty deposit on the surface of the potting soil. If that is what's being left behind on the surface of the soil, what were my animals ingesting and having to process in their renal system?!! :eek1:

D80

well i drink bottled water every day so it doesnt cost much to change my snakes water with it, even on a daily basis because ill have a half drank bottle of water sitting around and use that. Spring water like Zephyrhills is take directly from the source, but ive been to the plants (used to live by zephyrhills) and they have huge containers of water under UV lights to sterilize it before they filter it. Also I use dechlor for my fish tank to make the tapwater safe and i don't see why a dechlor like reptisafe could be harmful to the snakes if its not harmful to fish, which seem a lot more sensitive to environmental factors.

I use RO also as my local water source is using chloramines now to purify. Chloramines do not evaporate from water and besides in my local water which are from wells, there's so much "stuff" I would never drink it. It tastes weird and smells worse. Even my dogs only get RO.

I buy a 2 gallon jug (with a spout) at a time of regular Arrowhead spring drinking water from the local grocery store specifically for my snakes (I get my water delivered in 5 gallon jugs for about $25 a month). One 2 gallon jug costs about $1.50, and will normally last me about 1-2 months.