- Joined
- 6/16/21
- Messages
- 127
Genuinely I’m at such a loss I have no idea what to do or what could possibly turn the water that color. This is extremely urgent as I’m leaving the country soon and this timing is just horrendous.
Context: I am my bird’s primary caretaker and was not at home for the past 2 days-ish due to college orientation. CRUCIALLY - I am also leaving the country for 2.5 weeks on Friday night, and currently have her scheduled to go to a boarding place we bring her when out of town. Whenever I am gone, my brother takes care of my bird. He has done this for months at a time. I don’t possess a drivers license and can not bring her to the vet at my own leisure - the only time I’ll be able to do so at all is tomorrow morning/early afternoon at the latest due to my parents being at work.
I left for college orientation early in the morning on Tuesday. From what I’ve heard from my brother, he noticed her water was strangely green in the morning around 9am Wednesday. He also noted that the water bowl was somewhat slimy. There’s almost always a slight biofilm that gets washed away when I rinse it but he said it was more than normal. I also don’t know if he rinsed it multiple times like I do or just dumped and filled. In any case, he didn’t bring her out of the cage for some reason today and when I got back at around 7pm I noticed the water looking like this. When asking my brother, he said this was way greener than what he saw, but he also doesn’t fully remember so its not confirmed information. I genuinely have zero clue what could be going on and am really worried its somehow a bacterial infection like pseudomonas or something. However, the water is super clear and translucent which just adds to my confusion. There was absolutely nothing at the bottom of the bowl. There are also no green toys in her cage at the moment, other than a multicolored rope which she very occasionally chews on. The rope definitely does have dye that gets places including her beak but I would be insanely shocked if this was the case as it happened twice, her beak looks clean, it’s only a few times a year that she gets dye on her beak from that rope, and the water is so uniformly and deeply green that it feels highly improbable it could’ve all came from a rope.
I emptied the water outside, filled it again without scrubbing, and put it in my garage. The hope is by morning I’ll see it either clear or green and will have a better situation idea based off of that. I’m also cleaning a different bowl with isopropyl (its drying right now) and will put it in her cage with water after i wash out the alcohol thoroughly. For reference, I’m like 93% sure the bowls are all stainless steel, which is supposed to be inert so I don't think its a chemical reaction although I can’t be sure. I don’t have the results from this experiment though yet, I thought it might just be helpful to mention.
It’s now just after midnight the same day (or Thursday I guess..). If the water was somehow contaminated by some sort of chemical water contaminant or bacteria, I’m really worried that she could fall sick. The issue though is as I’m leaving town I’m bringing her to a boarding facility, and the worry is if this is benign (like dye somehow someway or some other thing I’m not considering) and I make a big deal out of it they might refuse service to not run the risk of contaminating all the birds and then I’ll be screwed in a different way because she’ll have absolutely nowhere to go when I’m gone and I can’t exactly cancel the trip (I’m going with my family, and I don’t have a driver’s license yet so realistically I can not stay home not to mention the colossal money waste). I’m also worried about the whole wait, see and monitor ordeal though because birds are good at hiding illness as we know and if she toughs it out until evening my window to bring her to the vet will have totally elapsed and I will physically be unable. I even asked gemini and the ai mode instance is convinced its something incredibly harmful and the web version is convinced its totally benign which is not helpful in the slightest and also kind of frustrating because neither of the explanations make a whole lot of sense (web version keeps claiming its food dye or toy dye which seems far fetched, and ai mode thinks its bacteria but there’s a clear lack of murkiness or something of the sort. its also ai so i don't really trust it all that much).
I’m just at a loss and need some thoughts, theories, or advice. Thank you all.
