What kind of water...?

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KayleighDUCK

Kayleigh
Joined
Sep 1, 2012
Messages
8
Location
Upstate New York
What water that you can buy at the store is best for chins? I shop at WalMart for the most part. I'm using spring water but I heard that it's very bad for chins. Help?
 
Before getting our own reverse osmosis system we use to refill them blue 5 gallon jugs at the Walmart refill stations. I would highly suggest NOT doing that. We thought it was good water but then we went to a show and almost every animal we took the judge mentioned that our animals looked like they weren't drinking enough water or had some kind of water issue. Just thought I'd share that since you were talking about water from Walmart.
 
Before getting our own reverse osmosis system we use to refill them blue 5 gallon jugs at the Walmart refill stations. I would highly suggest NOT doing that. We thought it was good water but then we went to a show and almost every animal we took the judge mentioned that our animals looked like they weren't drinking enough water or had some kind of water issue. Just thought I'd share that since you were talking about water from Walmart.

I agree with this 100%, the importance of taste of water to chins. I changed water a few months ago from reverse osmosis that frankly tasted nasty to me to alhambra and the chins drink twice as much water which to me is more important than being worried about giardia. Just my 2 cents.
 
I have been giving my chins reverse osmosis water from those fill stations as well. I'd love it if they would drink more water. Alhambra isn't available out here. I wonder if there is something they would like better available in my area. hmm..
 
I bought the green-capped gallons at WalMart that clearly state on them that they are processed by reverse osmosis, so hopefully it will be better now... she usually drinks quite a bit of water, so hopefully she'll like this new water. It tastes very good to me at least. Thank you all for your input! I truly appreciate it, as I'm new to owning chinchillas and want to take as good of care of her as I possibly can. :)
 
Smeone told me to just boil the water at home and let it to cold down then give it to my chin and that is what I do..is this not a good method? I have no big experience with chins so I can't tell if Pogo is a good drinker or he should be drinking more...any advice much appreciated
 
You should not boil the water before you give it to them. Have you ever tasted boiled water? It's horrible. I give my boys straight tap water, and I drink it myself, but I know the water quality limits for my city. I'm not sure if you have that type of info available to you? If you can't figure out if you tap water is filtered enough to be safe (no giardia) then I would suggest reverse osmosis water. You can get it by the gallon for pretty cheap here, again not sure about the UK though.
 
Boiling water just condenses all the minerals and any thing else in the water to more parts per million as you just have less water, not less of any thing else.
 
Sorry but i think yoir info about boiling water are ina:)ccurate...and a question:) the bottled water can be categorized in 2 big categories low mineral and high in minerals water my question is wich one is the best for chins the low mineral like aquafina and other RO water or like evian that is high in minerals because passes only through natural filtration and keeps all his mineral values?
 
Everything I've read says to use RO water. Here in the US we can get it for about $1 per gallon at WalMart. It takes our chin about 6-8 weeks to go through a gallon.
 
I use tap water with no problems. I use water bottles for all of them. It's very important to keep them clean. I have both plastic and glass.
 
If you are worried about water quality, buying a gallon of purified water is pretty cheap, it's 97 cents at Target... so if you're worried, just go out and get some purified!
 
The best water IMO for a chinchilla is one that they drink plenty of. I used to give R/O, but after I ran out and gave them alhambra instead they drank twice as much, so I will just take my chances of giardia in lieu of problems long term of not drinking enough.
 
We buy them Aquafina in big cases. They like it. And according to the site and whatnot they use reverse osmosis to filter it.
 
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