First and foremost, I’m inquiring about a specific topic. As I am a very particular individual, please do not comment or make suggestions outside of the scope of my inquiry please! I’m not asking for advice about other, better, pet fountains or anything. I just want an answer to my stated inquiry below. Nothing more, nothing less.
I purchased a auto-water fountain for my rabbit earlier this year. I also got one for my cats.
The problem I am having, and I am not sure if it’s because the water here is just garbage (hard water), there is that much dust in the air (..I mean, it’s possible) or the filters just suck – but I am having to change filters about every week – which I think is absolutely ridiculous. I could understand in my cat’s water fountain, because the kitten likes to stand on top of the thing…
But for my rabbit, Lulu, there is honestly no reason for it to get so dirty so quickly. It’s not covered in hair, which I WOULD understand – its grime and yuck. By the end of the week, the filter looks like someone took it and scrubbed a dirty floor with it, and it makes me SO MAD! I’m endlessly spending money on these stupid filters! I did have a gravity pet fountain for Lulu, which also had a filter, but it NEVER got this dirty. EVER! And the only thing that stops me from going back to it, is the fact that it sits lower and the water gets dirtier faster. Lulu will also bury the bowl part with paper or hay and, yeah.
So, with that bit of backstory, I have come up with the idea of making my OWN filters. I have kept a few of the filter cages and washed them. I purchased air vent filters (linked below) and also a mix of Zeolite and Carbon. I was going to straight up just do the activated carbon, but I had read somewhere that using zeolite will also help. Plus, oddly, the mix of the two was cheaper?
Now, I have tried to research of using zeolite (already know carbon is good) in a pet fountain is safe – with very limited return on resolution. Everything I read indicates it’s safe for pets in a different capacity, as in, using it for odor control in litter boxes and such. But, just because it’s safe for animal peets and toe beans, doesn’t mean it’s safe to ingest, or at least whatever it might put in to the water when the water is filtered through it. And, now I can’t even find that one article/forum post I read where someone else claimed to have used it in a pet fountain (for their dog I think? but a rabbit is not a dog).
Therefor, that lead me to here. My question being…
IS IT SAFE to use a mix of activated carbon and zeolite for filter medium in my rabbits water fountain? Or even my cats for that matter. But this forum is for rabbits, so that is more my focus.