Safe Water

ILoveHermies · Post by **ILoveHermies** » Mon Mar 03, 2014 11:46 am

So I've been using distilled water for my hermit crabs, up until about 2 1/2 months ago when I found out it wasn't good for hermits. I have since switched to spring water, but I'm not sure if that's any safer than distilled water. Anyone know about this?

Crabber85 · Post by **Crabber85** » Mon Mar 03, 2014 1:36 pm

Spring water is perfectly safe to use.Distilled tap water still contains a lot of junk like chloramine and heavy metals which don't evaporate just by leaving the water sitting out for twenty-four hours.Distilled bottled water is not much better as it would still need to be run through a reverse osmosis filter(R/O)to even be considered remotely safe.R/O filtration is a really sophisticated means of stripping the water of everything including flavor by using an immense amount of pressure to force the water molecules through a filter membrane that has openings on it so small that each water droplet gets dropped down to one third its actual size which causes the heavy elements like minerals, chlorine, chloramine and heavy metals to be left behind as they remain to large to pass through the filter membrane.The minerals get added back into the water at a later stage of the process just to give the water some flavor again.After passing through the filter the water is then ozonated to add extra oxygen to it which also helps to purify the water further.The final stage of the filtration process can either be UV sterilization or the somewhat redundant boiling and steam collection method after this last step is done the water gets a treatment of Potassium Chloride and a couple other kinds of salts but the levels used are negligible at best.After all is said and done the water that has been filtered via reverse osmosis has been pressurized, stripped down, oxygenated and then chemically treated with salt derivatives so its not really the best option for hermitcrab drinking water but its better than just using regular bottled drinking water which is nothing more than mildly filtered water from the local municipal source.Spring water is by far the superior type of water as it has been naturally filtered by the bedrock, river stones and deep ground rock formations all of which naturally mineralize the water as it pases over or through these objects.

jenok · Post by **jenok** » Thu Mar 06, 2014 2:50 am

If you find it hard to get or too expensive then buy the water conditioner/treatment. They make different ones so make sure the bottle say it removes chlorine, chloramine, and heavy metals.