question about water

[gonefnuts]

was wondering what type of water do you think is best suitable for our pet birds,and i ask this question for us all on here as well. should it be spring water, tap water, plain bottled drinking water or distilled water?

[kristy29]

I give my birds tap water, but I use a Pur water filter on my tap. Spring water has less regulation on it than tap does, so if you use bottled water, use the ones called drinking water, they use reverse osmosis which is very clean.

[gonefnuts]

i buy my water from walmart. it's bottled and labled drinking water. i have read to give your birds disttled water,is this true?

[Monica]

I give my birds tap water... however I would prefer using filtered water or bottled water.

I like to use GSE in the birds water, as it helps keep down bacteria from growing. I use 1 drop GSE per 8 oz of water.

[fuzzy02cls]

I have a reverse osmosis system on my tap water so it's filtered.

[milihandra]

I also use a Pur water filter, in the long run it's cheaper than buying bottled. Drinking water and distilled are good, I'd stay away from Spring though.
Walmart I think also sells something called "Purified water", that would probably be your best bet.

[Ponyfeathers]

We have a water softener here, and i know its harmful to my fish, but would it be harmful to a bird if they drank it? There is no regular tap otherwise..if not, ill just use the water i buy for the fish tank

[Valo's Moirana]

there are plenty of threads on this board dealing with water quality.... you can use the search tool to find them

in a nut shell - use tap water with a water filter. if you don't have tap water otherwise, get bottled water and run it through a water filter (for the fids and yourself). bottled water standards can be lower than tap water standards - keep that in mind.
what do you use for your fish tank - if you get RO water for your fish tank, you could use it for your fids too. personally i would stay away from distilled water since it has no minerals and is slightly acidic...

hope this helps

[Ponyfeathers]

i did a search for softened water but only a few threads came up and none of them meant water softened with a water softeneing.

for the tank natural spring water is best, however sometimes the grocery store doesnt have it in stock, so ill buy distilled water (RO water). I won't get drinking water for them because it has minerals in it that are harmful to them. so if they're out of spring water they've always had distilled water there.

[BrookR1]

RO and distilled are not the same thing. Avoid distilled water because the chemistry of the water can actually cause harm to your birds over time. Basically, there aren't any minerals in distilled to buffer the water, causing it to become acidic.

Reverse osmosis is best (I get mine from the supermarket out of the vending machines that charge 25/30 cents per gallon). I use RO both to drink and for my reef aquarium with great results. If you don't feel like hauling around jugs of water or purchasing a water filter, then tap water is fine. The only thing in tap water that may cause harm to your birds is chlorine. You can remove the chlorine using two methods: 1) add a dechlorinator such as AmQuel...you can find it in the tropical fish section of your local pet store and it's totally safe for birds...and expensive fish 2) let the water sit in an open container for 24-48 hours. The chlorine in the water will be naturally removed from the water. The minerals in the water are actually benefical.

There's a great article in the new BirdTalk about water.