Something Interesting For Boa Owners.

[blackcrystal22]

So I took Ruu, my BCI from Jimi to the vet because of a possible RI.
Turns out it was just stuck shed. Good news.

Bad news, I had also noticed that he has been bloated for a little while, and gets the same every 4 weeks or so.
The vet felt around and found a large obstruction of sorts, twice as big as the vent. They started talking about x-rays, surgery, and all sorts of things.
Obviously I went with the first thing, an enema to see if it would come out.

It did, and guess what it was?
A Urate Stone. Similar to kidney stones. We were very lucky it came out, so obviously I asked how to prevent it from happening again and what caused it. Heres the informative part, so listen up if you have a boa.

I've seen a couple threads on here about tap water vs distilled water for the snakes. Apparently, urate stones can be caused by minerals often found in tap water. What's worse, is that our city water isn't well water anymore, but recently was made into reverse osmosis, and has few hard minerals in it anymore. So it apparently does not take much, but she told me boas can specifically be sensitive to this, where pythons may not be.

I'm switching my KSB and my BCI to distilled only water or water that has had the minerals broken down with a liquid my friend uses (not sure what it is, but I'm going to look it up and ask her about it).

Thought I should let you guys know, so that everyone can take that information into consideration as well.

Also.. on a different note..
Steven, my bp rescue, is getting a fecal done soon, and is a boy, with no other problems. :]

[Patrick Long]

Id be interested in knowing what the breeders like Pete Kahl and Brian Sharp use for water...seeing as they have been breeding boas for years and years.......

[Lateralus_Love]

Id be interested in knowing what the breeders like Pete Kahl and Brian Sharp use for water...seeing as they have been breeding boas for years and years.......

If you find out, let me know

[blackcrystal22]

Id be interested in knowing what the breeders like Pete Kahl and Brian Sharp use for water...seeing as they have been breeding boas for years and years.......

It's probably just my luck.

[icygirl]

What's worse, is that our city water isn't well water anymore, but recently was made into reverse osmosis, and has few hard minerals in it anymore. So it apparently does not take much, but she told me boas can specifically be sensitive to this, where pythons may not be.

I'm switching my KSB and my BCI to distilled only water or water that has had the minerals broken down with a liquid my friend uses (not sure what it is, but I'm going to look it up and ask her about it).

Just a few curious questions if you don't mind.

I'm wondering about that liquid that breaks down minerals, because the only water purifier for reptiles that I know of is ReptiSafe, which dechlorinates the water but does nothing to remove minerals.

The other thing is that I generally think of RO water being purer than distilled. My boyfriend used to have an RO filter when he kept corals, but occasionally when he was in a hurry he'd use distilled from the supermarket. Distilled always came up with algae blooms while RO did not. However city water is purified using a many step process; plus, I don't know what the actual mineral content difference is between RO and distilled.

In your situation I'd immediately think to switch to spring water, not distilled. What made you choose distilled over spring? I know that distilled water makes people sick if we drink too much of it; hopefully it's not the same for snakes? (If the vet told you to do this there's probably some reason for it, or if there is some reason that you know of specifically.)

[ThyTempest]

I dont see how RO water could be more pure than distilled. Distilled is by its nature pure water, nothing but H2O. For those who dont know, distilled water is made by condensing the steam formed from boiling water, and RO(Reverse Osmosis) is made by filtering water across a membrane by the process of osmosis. This is a fairly complex thing to teach via a post, so google it if you need more info.

As for spring water....that seems like a bad idea to me since spring water tastes better because of the amount of minerals typically found in it.

Also, I have never heard of people becoming sick from drinking distilled water....most people just dont drink it since it tastes horrible....so bleh.

Back to the OP, thanks for the tip, I think I will switch away from tap water to be safe. If anyone has some inside connections to talk to any of the big breeders to find out if they use tap/RO/Distilled or dechlor water, that would be cool.

[JimiSnakes]

Please do not BUY water. It is environmentally UNsafe and causes harm to the environment in many ways. The production of making plastic is harmful to the environment and the process of recycling plastic is only 40-60%.

If your water has hard minerals in it, for whatever reasons, please do your homework and buy the best house water filter you can get (general upkeep cost of about 6-8 bucks a month maximum) and replace your water filter more often. Then you can buy one of those tap water purifiers too to also reduce the amount of minerals in your house water.

I can guarantee that the "big breeders" do NOT use bottled water on their snakes. Many of them I know just use intense filtration devices, like the ones I stated above but on a much larger scale.

A good thing to know about bottled water- their isn't any regulations for them to follow; whereas, city water has to be tested and regulated on a daily basis for any contaminants and the public notified immediately of any oddities.

As for the chlorine issue with city water- I fill 5 gallon buckets with water and let it sit for a day with an open lid before I use it. This is allows any chlorine to evaporate and dissipate so as not to harm my snakes.

Hope this helps.

[ThyTempest]

Please do not BUY water. It is environmentally UNsafe and causes harm to the environment in many ways. The production of making plastic is harmful to the environment and the process of recycling plastic is only 40-60%.

If your water has hard minerals in it, for whatever reasons, please do your homework and buy the best house water filter you can get (general upkeep cost of about 6-8 bucks a month maximum) and replace your water filter more often. Then you can buy one of those tap water purifiers too to also reduce the amount of minerals in your house water.

I can guarantee that the "big breeders" do NOT use bottled water on their snakes. Many of them I know just use intense filtration devices, like the ones I stated above but on a much larger scale.

A good thing to know about bottled water- their isn't any regulations for them to follow; whereas, city water has to be tested and regulated on a daily basis for any contaminants and the public notified immediately of any oddities.

As for the chlorine issue with city water- I fill 5 gallon buckets with water and let it sit for a day with an open lid before I use it. This is allows any chlorine to evaporate and dissipate so as not to harm my snakes.

Hope this helps.

Letting the water sit is a good idea, but if it doesnt get any sunlight, or extreme heat, it wont make the water any better/safer for your reptiles. As for the filtration systems, that does seem like a much better/more efficient method to de-mineralize the water.

As for the plastic waste, I know my local exotic pet store offers a discount for reusing containers, as well as a bulk discount for something like 10+ gallons at a time. I know some people use big 10 and 20 gallon "Culligan" bottles and 5 gallon buckets. Buckets are nice because they can be left in the sun with enough surface area to do some good, whereas the bottlenecked containers like Culligan bottles are pretty much useless for sun-safing water since the plastic absorbs most of the UV light.

[JimiSnakes]

Forgot the sun part, it was like 3am...give me a break, lol. Thanks!

[blackcrystal22]

Please do not BUY water. It is environmentally UNsafe and causes harm to the environment in many ways. The production of making plastic is harmful to the environment and the process of recycling plastic is only 40-60%.

If your water has hard minerals in it, for whatever reasons, please do your homework and buy the best house water filter you can get (general upkeep cost of about 6-8 bucks a month maximum) and replace your water filter more often. Then you can buy one of those tap water purifiers too to also reduce the amount of minerals in your house water.

I can guarantee that the "big breeders" do NOT use bottled water on their snakes. Many of them I know just use intense filtration devices, like the ones I stated above but on a much larger scale.

A good thing to know about bottled water- their isn't any regulations for them to follow; whereas, city water has to be tested and regulated on a daily basis for any contaminants and the public notified immediately of any oddities.

As for the chlorine issue with city water- I fill 5 gallon buckets with water and let it sit for a day with an open lid before I use it. This is allows any chlorine to evaporate and dissipate so as not to harm my snakes.

Hope this helps.

Thanks a lot Jimi, if you have any more ideas let me know. Unfortunately my mother does not want to spend money on a filtration system or have one installed into the house, and right now it's much too cold to put the water out in the sun (snowing, negative 10+ with windchill) so I'm kind of at a loss at what to do.

It's very interesting to know that bigger breeders did in fact take things like that into consideration and had large scale filtration systems in use. Do you know if all of them would use filtration systems or if any had problems without them?

I dont see how RO water could be more pure than distilled. Distilled is by its nature pure water, nothing but H2O. For those who dont know, distilled water is made by condensing the steam formed from boiling water, and RO(Reverse Osmosis) is made by filtering water across a membrane by the process of osmosis. This is a fairly complex thing to teach via a post, so google it if you need more info.

As for spring water....that seems like a bad idea to me since spring water tastes better because of the amount of minerals typically found in it.

Also, I have never heard of people becoming sick from drinking distilled water....most people just dont drink it since it tastes horrible....so bleh.

Back to the OP, thanks for the tip, I think I will switch away from tap water to be safe. If anyone has some inside connections to talk to any of the big breeders to find out if they use tap/RO/Distilled or dechlor water, that would be cool.

I agree, but I want to avoid buying it as much as possible (my mom buys bottled water quite a bit, and I highly disagree with it because I know the energy wasting process that goes into the pumping and creation of water bottles) and we already are kind of in a pickle.
What would be a good idea/solution, is if there was some place I could re-use my gallon bottles, and refill them with distilled water, but I don't know if that's available anywhere, and the sun purifying idea won't work very well in this cold.
To me, mineral water upsets my stomach (I'm just a really sensitive person) and I would prefer another solution, but my mom's solution doesn't give me a whole lot of choices when I'm still living in her home.

Just a few curious questions if you don't mind.

I'm wondering about that liquid that breaks down minerals, because the only water purifier for reptiles that I know of is ReptiSafe, which dechlorinates the water but does nothing to remove minerals.

The other thing is that I generally think of RO water being purer than distilled. My boyfriend used to have an RO filter when he kept corals, but occasionally when he was in a hurry he'd use distilled from the supermarket. Distilled always came up with algae blooms while RO did not. However city water is purified using a many step process; plus, I don't know what the actual mineral content difference is between RO and distilled.

In your situation I'd immediately think to switch to spring water, not distilled. What made you choose distilled over spring? I know that distilled water makes people sick if we drink too much of it; hopefully it's not the same for snakes? (If the vet told you to do this there's probably some reason for it, or if there is some reason that you know of specifically.)

It could be ReptiSafe, I have yet to ask her about it, but she has been using it for her boas. I'm not sure if it's a reliable thing, so obviously I'm not going to defend it in any way, just look into it.

From my understanding, the issue with water is the mineral content that causes the urates to harden into stones. Spring water has minerals added to it and is probably not what I'm looking for. The vet said distilled water, because there are no minerals, that is all the information I have.

You have to remember, RO is available in a filter that attaches to your water source under your sink or house. This RO is for the entire town, and still has to go through the mineral layered pipes that run through this 200+ year old town. My house is 1856, and it's pipes are pretty old in themselves, so it probably has a lot to do with the pipes and not just the water.