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[ChinchillaChris]

Hi fellow chinchilla owners,
I have a question about water for my chinchillas. For a few months now I've been giving my chinchillas plain regular water from the sink (it's city water, not well water) but I've realized that though convenient, tap water can contain giardia and other microbes that'll possibly make my chinchillas sick one day. So, I have the following questions, what do you think I should use to give my chinchillas good and clean water. Would you recommend a Brita or Pur filter (and if so, do you recommend the filter pitchers, or the one that attach to the sink), should I use the reverse osmosis method (which I don't know anything about, so please someone tell me about it), or, to make life easier, should I just buy jugs of filtered water from the supermarket? Also, I have two miscellaneous questions:
1. Does putting the chinchilla's water bottle in the dishwasher suffice, or should it be cleaned with water and bleach, or some other method?
2. The chinchillas should only have room temperature water, correct? I've only ever given them room temperature water, but I've heard others say cold is fine too, though I thought cold would give them a chill? Does anybody know?
Thank you everybody, any and all answers are greatly appreciated!

[GrayRodent]

I have been using a regular on-the-faucet pur filter for about a year and a half now without any problems for my chinchillas. I keep a water jug filled with filtered water for my own use and use that to fill my chinchilla's water. We have been using the same filter system for many years with my mom's African Grey parrot. She won't let him have anything but filtered or bottled water. She prefers to give him bottled water but we have not had problems with the filtered water. I feel that bottled water is safer in theory but the difference isn't going to stop me from using filtered since it is way more convenient for me to use and seems to work just fine.

Concerning water temperature I know that chinchillas come from a very low temperature environment and unless they are kept at near freezing temperatures I don't think it makes a difference. Most chinchillas drink their water at night so chances are it will be pretty much at room temperature anyway if it starts out chilled.

[mb30]

I just boil the water and let it cool down