Rainwater good for what?

[deeishealthy]

I live in the Lower Mainland, BC. We get a LOT of rain. But if I were to collect it, how do I classify it? Is it equivelent to spring water? Distilled water? Can I use it in my mister?

Another water question: I'm going through a lot of distilled water with my mister (totally worth it to have a balanced vivarium). Can I filter the water from the bottom of the terrarium and reuse it? Or use rainwater? (Can you tell that I'm so hoping rainwater equals distilled? LOL)

[deranged chipmunk]

Rainwater is, in some people's opinion, the only thing to use in a viv. I tend to agree. Unless, of course, you have industry in the city, in which case i would avoid it. But, if you can collect it cleanly and you have no excessive pollution, then it is certainly ok to use in your mister. I would test the pH at the very minimum before using it though. It will tell you if it is excessively acidic (acid rain). No, it won't melt your frog's face off......lol

If you are not running any filtration in your system, then recirculating your water supply is a less than stellar idea. I recycle in my mantella tank, but i also have so much bio material in there that i could toss in a dead moose and not pollute the water.....lol this has been a source of. debatenon other noards for a while

[deeishealthy]

So far the water is clean in that I spot clean the frog poop if I can see it, but they usually go in their pool, which is emptied daily. It's cocofibre that tints it. I pondered running it through coffee filters.

I will look into how to test for acidity in my rainwater and what I need. That's new to me. To Google!

[kueluck]

Rain water is all I've used for almost 2 years on my amphibians. I only use distilled to mist and clean the glass.

[deeishealthy]

Distilled is what I'm looking to replace. I'm going through a lot of it with the misting machine. It's worth it, because it's regulating the humidity unlike I've been able to, but holy man. I'm a bit of a tree hugger so paying for bottled water is not cool in my world.

[kueluck]

Other waters will plug up your misting machine because of minerals and deposits. But then you can alway just use a hand mister, rain water would work for this.

[deeishealthy]

Google tells me that the ph of the rainfall in the Lower Mainland is 4. No idea what that means.

[fish4all]

That means it is acidic, much more than the normal rainfall reading of 5.6 which is still acidic. The scale is 0-14. 0 being strongest Acid, 14 being strongest base and 7 being neutral.

I would test my your rain water to see what it reads direct collected. Get a reading and then aerate it for 24 hours and check it again. Lawn and garden, pet stores and pool stores should have fairly cheap and easy to use pH test kits. One recommendation, get a liquid test kit and not strips. My work with aquarium fish has taught me a hard lesson on the accuracy of strips compared to liquid testing.

What a pH of 4 means to you being able to use it for your animals, I wish I could help there but I do not know.

I have used rain water for 9 years for aquariums, frogs, insects and rodents and I have never seen a negative effect from it.

[UncleChester]

So far the water is clean in that I spot clean the frog poop if I can see it, but they usually go in their pool, which is emptied daily. It's cocofibre that tints it. I pondered running it through coffee filters.

I will look into how to test for acidity in my rainwater and what I need. That's new to me. To Google!

There are pH testing kits availabe anywhere that sells pet fish.

This may be a stupid question from someone who doesn't own an automated misting machine, but can they not be taken apart and cleaned? Or run vinegar through them periodically to remove mineral deposits? Not while connected to the tank of course. Vinegar works great on the coffee maker. Mineral deposits on the glass are easy enough to clean up if cost is a concern. Rain water isn't generally high on the mineral content as far as I know, but this may be dependent on where you live, like next to a big salty ocean?