Question?

Questions about food and water.
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CrabbyPattyMom
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Question?

Post by CrabbyPattyMom »

I was wondering can you boil water for the hermits?? would that remove chlorine and the other bad stuff?? just wondering.....
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emmac350
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Re: Question?

Post by emmac350 »

Actually, it doesn't remove all of the chlorine let alone the chloramines and heavy metals that hermies are sensitive to.

You can either buy a good quality water dechlorinator that removes chlorine, chloramines, and heavy metals, like API, or you can buy distilled or reverse osmosis-purified water in gallon jugs at the supermarket. Those two purification techniques are good for getting out almost all the nasty stuff in our water today. Just ensure that the water doesn't say "minerals added for taste" or anything suspicious like that. A lot of times it will be added and the writing on the bottle will be tiny, so make sure you check! The problem with those 'minerals' is that they usually aren't crab-safe forms of the minerals they add, so it can be rather bad for the crabs.
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CrabbyPattyMom
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Re: Question?

Post by CrabbyPattyMom »

AH! OK! Thanks again emmac350!
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Wai
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Re: Question?

Post by Wai »

I know what chloramines and heavy metals are, but when dechlorinators claim to remove "chlorine", are they referring to chlorine gas, Cl2, which is toxic? I am sure that chloride ions, Cl-, are not harmful to hermit crabs, because they are a key component of salt water. When you add sea salt, 95%+ which is NaCl, to water, it dissociates into Na+ and Cl- ions. I'm just confused by the ambiguous wording of products.
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