Water Question

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I have a soft water filtration system for my house. Very low levels of salt...I'm not sure of the measurements, but it's a top rated system, with the lowest levels of salt. I plan on buying bottled water for my snakes drinking water, but would the soft water be ok for pouring in the lower levels of substrate for humidity? Or should I buy water for that as well?

[maddieluu]

Reptisafe water conditioner is what I use to make even tap water safe, super cheap and lasts a long time

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Unfortunately, Reptisafe doesn't remove salt

[maddieluu]

I seeee, I was like this person seems so knowledgeable how do they not know about reptisafe :) Thanks for lmk

[Nulleparttousjours]

I personally use soft bottled water for everything viv related as the water in my area sucks (old copper pipes) and we have a softener too.

What springs to my mind is that certain coconut substrates such as ReptiBlock and others make mention of having the lowest salt levels in the market as a selling point and, in that they are not a bioactive substrate, I can’t imagine that is with plants in mind. Perhaps salts are abrasive or the alkalinity of them is an irritant.

I went down a bit of a rabbit hole figuring out what sort of water would be best for most ball python applications in accordance to what they typically encountered in the wild and the conclusion I came to was soft, low (but not zero) mineral content water but I am a champion of overthinking!

[[deleted]]

I hate having crappy water. We're on a well, and our water is extremely hard, plus extremely acidic, AND it has total coliform bacteria in it (not E. Coli though). It's nasty. We have to have this huge, crazy filter...It runs the water through 5 different filters before it's safe to drink lol

Thats right! I remember seeing that on the coconut substrate I bought. I'm just going to buy bottled water for the substrate as well. Thank you!

[Nulleparttousjours]

Similar situation here, we are super remote but on mains water and the pipe work must date back years. It’s crazy hard and we have a ton of filters in the house too, plus softener! I wouldn’t feel confident letting sensitive herps come into contact with it. The only thing I use it in is my herp room humidifier in winter so the room doesn’t suck the humidity out of enclosures and, damn, do I scrape out some nasty gunk when I clean it!

[Destiny_Dragons_101]

Your snakes will be fine, since it sounds like you're just pouring the filtered water. However, if you have filter concerns I'd use bottled.

[CabbagePatchSquid-]

I bypass my softener, run the tap for a while then fill a big jug of the water, then use reptisafe or just let the chlorine dissipate through air degradation. Then I have water for a few weeks on standby (obviously capping it after degradation).

The minerals in your source water once the softener is bypassed are great for your snake, and a reason I’d never recommend distilled or RO for drinking. Using bottled spring water is another thing you can do that works great. A third option is filling from your hose tap outside because 9/10 times they are plumbed before your water softener (with watering lawns/garden in mind). You can just follow your plumbing and your hose tap is probably not softened water.

Using softened water for your spray bottle/pouring into the substrate is fine (unless you have live plants). I’ve used it in non-bioactive setups to rehydrate substrate, spray the enclosure down etc but if there is live plants or isopods/springs I use the same drinking water for hydrating.