Fresh water, derp?

[guidofatherof5]

Remember, standing tap goes bad too. Not sure how much water you use.

[Herp Derp]

Standing water will remove chloramines.
Rain water can pick up a lot of contaminants as it falls. Letting tap water stand for 24 hours might be the best choice, just my opinion.

I guess I am confused now, Ian mentioned they don't

[Herp Derp]

Ashley, do you bring them inside after they are full? do you cover the tops so mosquitoes don't get in? how long does it stay in the jugs?

[Herp Derp]

There's a lot of factors(temp, air quality, amount of water, etc) that probably contribute to how fast standing tap water will go "bad"... so what length of time would be considered safe? 3days, 1 wk, 2wks..etc? What are the signs if any that the water has gone bad?

[slipknot711]

all 4 or 5 jugs only lasts me 2 days tops, but i dont just have garters i use the water for my cats, my ball pythons, my dragons to top off and change my fishwater etc... so 1-2 days is all i get out of it. where i live the tap water is strong, to me anyways.

[joeysgreen]

If the water looks clean, it's safe to use IMO (tap water left out to evaporate Cl-). If you are worried, you can let it sit for 24hrs and then put a lid on it to protect it. Because of my amphibians I regularly have 5 or 6 10gallon buckets sitting with water in it. It can be used in a day, or 2 weeks, I"m not concerned.

I believe that because chloramine is a larger molecule it remains a solute and does not diffuse into the air. I could be wrong on that; I think I have a paper somewhere on the topic that I'll see if I can find.

For standard practices, it seems for your snakes, using fresh tap water, or 24hr stale tap water will suffice.

Ian

[Herp Derp]

I also have water sitting around so I'm not really worried. I'm just curious about if there was some sort of cut off time one shouldn't use the water, in which case I'd give it to the plants outside. I guess trying to get informed and hopefully this will help new people starting out as well. I like knowing some of the reasons why rather than just do this. It's like you shouldn't give dogs or cat chocolate... not everyone knows that except for maybe owners that have had those pets for a long time(note: caffeine is toxic to us as well in high amounts, pets are smaller so it takes less). When I came to this site I luckily stumbled onto a thread that said red wrigglers can be toxic(depending on what the wrigglers ate) to snakes and should be avoided. I'm wondering now if they are toxic to fish. grr hijacking my own thread... just found some site saying there seems to be a lot of confusion of red wriggler/red worm/red tiger... lots of mislabelling happening as well.

back to the topic
can anyone else chime in on this?

[chris-uk]

Chloramine doesn't evaporate off. I could dig out a reference, but when I was researching my tropical fish I did a lot of reading about water quality. I also found that at the time (3-4 years ago) none of the tap water in UK is treated with chloramine. The issue you have in the US is that your tap water is treated differently depending on your local water company, the industry isn't as closely regulated as the UK.

Standing clean tap water in a clean container shouldn't result in it going off quickly. Mine stands for a day with the lids off the bottle, then I put the lids on to keep it for up to a week before using it. Sometimes I forget to put the lids on and the bottles stay open for a few days. Sometimes I have to change all the bowls at the same time and run out so I use tap water straight from the tap knowing that chlorine will evaporate off from the bowl quickly.

I'm not overly paranoid about water for the snakes. I am paranoid about water for my fish.

[ravendance]

I've been keeping fish for about 10 years and I think I might be able to explain what is/isn't removed from leaving the water standing. There are two different chemicals being talked about here - chlorine and chloramine. Depending on where you live, the water company may use one or the other to treat tap water. Chlorine is less resistant, so leaving the water "Standing" overnight will allow that to evaporate. Chloramine is more resilient however, and will not be removed through evaporation. I've not taken any chances with my fish or reptiles and treat with Reptisafe. My question is, would this be safe for garter snakes? (I tried including a link but the forum doesn't seem to want me to do that?)

[ravendance]

I was wondering, I use Reptisafe for my corn snakes and leopard gecko, is this safe (has anyone used it) for garter snakes?