Hello. About to get my first gecko and I have read mixed things on the water for their pangea, drinking, and misting. Do most folks use tap water? Or something like reptisafe?
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I personally add a water dechlorinator/conditioner (I do use the reptisafe blue liquid) to all my animal water, but I think distilled water is generally considered safe too.
Tap can have a lot of things like chlorine and flouride in it, which can harm your animals and mess with nutrition absorption - most people recommend NOT going with straight tap water
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I use bottled water only for ALL of my reptiles. @cmills is correct. Tap water is not good for anybody imho! 
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I use filtered water on top of a dechlorinator dosed for 1 gallon for all of my animals currently.
I have personally used tap water in the past and haven’t had any adverse affects but I wouldn’t reccomend it for everyone since everybody’s water is different depending on city water cleaning chemicals or water wells. So I’d say you should stick with bottled or filtered water just to be safe. (That includes water used for misting!)
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Meh, I think some of you folks are waaaaaayyyy too overcautious about using tap water. Do you consume tap water? Do your kids consume tap water? Do your (human) babies consume tap water? Probably yes. Do you think the restaurants you eat at use anything but tap water? Probably not. Do you think any of the major breeders of any animal use anything but tap water? Probably not. If you have average tap water, it’s probably safe for your animals.
You can dechlorinate tap water buy letting it sit exposed to the air for a couple of days. A gallon jug with the cap off for a few days and all the chlorine should be gone. A pitcher without a lid should be good to go even faster as it has more water-to-air surface area. Circulate air through it, say with an aquarium pump, and you can get the chlorine out even faster. That’s how you can dechlorinate water without chemicals. As for the fluoride, I don’t know if it evaporates like the chlorine does.
Distilled water is NOT good for a primary H2O source of consumption. It lacks the minerals and trace elements animals need. But it is excellent for misting as it will not leave water spots or clog your ports. I know there are small lizards that lick water drops on foliage, in that case you probably don’t want to mist with distilled water. But then again isn’t rain water basically distilled water. I have a feeling rain water is not as pure as distilled water. Rain water probably has some minerals and trace elements. See, I’m overthinking it. It’s freaking water!
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. Seriously I don’t drink tap water unless there is nothing else handy and most of the time I don’t drink water in restaurants. I just don’t like water, period. So I don’t get my recommended daily consumption of 64 ounces of water either.
I went to a seminar once that conducted an experiment on what could possibly be still floating around in a glass of ordinary tap water after processing and whether it was true or not it turned me against tap water no matter whose faucet it came out of! . And I am not going to mention what I saw!
I will say, for animals like amphibians that are so sensitive to the sort of water they absorb through their skin, a comparison between what a human can safely consume compared to what a more sensitive animal that tap water isn’t made for can consume is a bit apples v. oranges
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Meh, you inhale all kinds of germs just breathing. I’m sure restaurant food has all kinds of gross stuff in it. Heck, I’m sure packaged grocery store food has all kinds of gross stuff in it. That’s why you have an immunity system.
That whole “drinking 64 ounces of water a day” is cr@p. Your body might need 64 ounces of H2O molecules a day to function, but you don’t need to get them from drinking water. Coffee is mostly water, soda is mostly water, just about everything you drink is mostly water. You get H2O molecules from some of the the food you eat too. You need H2O molecules to digest your food, circulate your blood, sweat, keep your kidneys functioning. How you get those molecules it up to you. Drinking water is just the most direct way to get straight H2O molecules into your system, but it’s not the only way.
Fair enough. I’ll retract somewhat, for the amphibians. I’m in a ranting kind of mood this evening. I need to watch some Billy rants on his MC YouTube channel.
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Agreed. I can’t hold 64 ounces of water anyway! . But there are some drinks mixed with water that are dehydrating so they really don’t count in your daily “dose”.
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I think the last time I ever drank tap water was when I was probably 5 or 6yo and I was super dehydrated after playing outside. None of my immediate family drinks tap, nor do me and my husband lol, only bottled water or water from jugs for us. And of course we have the filtered water for the animals.
Honestly its up to your body composition, activity levels and overall health. Everyone is differently built, I have to drink more water because I’m active outside in Texas heat and I dehydrate super easily… I’ve been to the hospital on multiple occasions for dehydration alone even though I drink a minimum of 2 bottles a day and my family has a history of UT and water absorbtion issues. Buuut I’m getting off topic lol.
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When I was a kid we drank out of the garden hose or straight out of the spigot. Sometimes from a stranger’s house. It took too long to go inside and get a glass of water. We were playing HARD. I never got sick from it, that I know of, but I’ll never do that again.
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I 69 years old and I remember drinking out of a garden hose or out of a spigot at the tennis courts, probably every day in the summer time during my growing up years. I would be willing to bet my next social security check that the water I drank out of my garden hose or the water spigot at the tennis courts was a lot cleaner and safer to drink, then, that the water coming out of the faucet in my kitchen sink now.
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It kind of depends on your tap water. The quality of tap water and the additives it has can vary wildly depending on where you live.
I can smell and taste the chlorine in my local tap water, so I don’t give it to any of my animals unfiltered. I have a reverse osmosis system that I use for all my animals’ water needs (and for my own drinking water). If I didn’t have the RO system, I’d either buy bottled water or use a dechlorinator.
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While this may work to reduce chlorine levels some, this does not account for chloramine which many municipalities have begun switching to for treatment.
Fluoride in tap water will not evaporate by leaving it sitting out. It is a dissolved mineral.
These are a couple of great points.
Yes. But just because I do something myself does not inherently make it safe for my animals. I’m sure you can agree that there are a lot of things you do that would be detrimental if done by many animals.
If someone knows that their own tap water is fine for consumption by their own animals then that’s that, but not all tap water is equal. It is quite alright and respectable for the OP to approach the subject with questions. Overall it really depends on the composition of your tap water and the animal it is being provided to in order to determine if additional treatment would be recommended.
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That’s so true, the amount of chocolate I eat is a threat to dogs in a 20 mile radius
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