He Prefers Running Water - help!

[charmedbyekkie]

Cairo has found out the joys of drinking straight from the tap…. I’m not particularly concerned about the water quality - Singapore has some of the most stringent and healthiest water as water security is a significant concern here (one significant source of water is - we buy water from Malaysia, clean it, and sell it back to them; the other source is reclaimed water, which is so clean it’s perfect for industrial use but it can actually deplete minerals from your body unless they add minimal minerals back in).

What I am concerned about is his drinking habits now. He does sometimes drink from his water bowl (I can tell if he’s dropped some dried veggies in or not), but not often enough I feel. The reason I say that is because his poop has good faeces and urates, but hardly any urine. It only has noticeable urine when he goes to a faucet and waits for me to turn it on. Now, I’m not home most of the day, so that means he only gets access to water for about 4-6 hours every day, and that’s if I bring him to the kitchen or bathroom and he reminds me that he wants a drink.

My partner is thinking of how to make a hygienic water fountain in his cage, but I’m quite hesitant about how to manage keeping all the plastic piping clean (I’d imagine I would need to clean it daily with vinegar and F10, but even then I would need access to scrub inside).

Any advice?

 

[wrench13]

Maybe the guts from one of those desk top decorative fountains? Or look into a 'bubbler', meant for use when keeping chameleons, who will ONLY drink from a running source of H2O (or what looks like running water to them).

 

[Alehner529]

They sell water dishes with running water for cats...perhaps something like that?

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

[bill_e]

So I just put some thought into this. I do actually have a stainless steel cat fountain which is the material you want, but I think it's too big for a cage and more importantly, even if you can fit it in the cage, you would have to concoct some kind of conduit to run the power supply cable through until it gets into the fountain. Then, a parrot is a parrot and he would likely at some point get bored, pull off the top, and get access to the pump and wires...not good. So then I thought the only safe way to do this is dripping the water. Set a reservoir outside the cage, on the top or a nearby shelf or bookcase. Connect some aquarium tubing and an aquarium air valve to the tubing and adjust it so that the reservoir of water lasts for some portion of or all of the 12 hours (or whatever) your away. There's your source of moving fresh water.

Now in the cage you have two dishes, one sitting inside the other. The bottom dish is not for drinking, it's just to catch the overflow from the smaller dish which is the drinking dish. In the overflow dish you've drilled a hole and attached a drain which drains into a bucket outside the cage.

My description may sound complicated but it would actually be very easy to set up and because the water isn't recirculating the cleanup would be easier and less frequent. The only real issue I see is finding a drip rate that would entice Cario to drink.

 

[bill_e]

Or, just stop letting him drink from the tap....probably the easiest thing to do

 

[charmedbyekkie]

The outside reservoir makes the most sense in keeping any contamination down.. will definitely look into our DIY options that would also recycle the water for maybe watering our plants. Otherwise I'd probably need my partner to make two and then I'd just switch which one is used and which one is being cleaned.

I did stop letting him drink from the tap for a while, but then his droppings got so dry and it seemed like he would struggle to pass them sometimes. We live in a hot and humid tropical country and just went through the hazy period, so I know our vet would scold me for preventing him from getting hydrated. I tried to wait almost a week, but then got too concerned and let him drink from the tap again, which fixed his droppings right up.

 

[fiddlejen]

Is there any chance he just doesn't like his current drinking bowl? Have you tried other bowls to see if they make any differenc

 

[noodles123]

Noodles is the same way...I mean, she does drink out of her bowl, but she will drink from a specific tap every single time...It's kind of weird...
Poop looks okay in her case, but I totally understand what you mean.