A few drops of blue food coloring per gallon of water has inhibited algae growth in our water bottles.

Until we have an automatic watering system we will be best friends with our flip-lid water bottles. I love these bottles and especially the flip top lids – it takes so much less time than unscrewing the nozzle of each bottle to fill with water!

One thing I DO NOT love about water bottles is that they can get “ew!”-stuff inside of them – algae, moths, dirt, etc.

Earlier this year I complained about this at the feed store and one of the workers suggested putting blue food coloring in the water. She told me the blue coloring would inhibit the growth of mossy-type things in the water bottles.

We tried putting 1-2 drops of blue food coloring per gallon of water for months and didn’t think much of it, it was under the category of “can’t hurt, might as well try.” We saw only minimal algae growth over the following months. When we ran out of blue food coloring we tried green for about a week – but that actually seemed to encourage growth in the bottles!

When it was all said and done, space was at a premium I was being cheap. I didn’t want to buy all the other colors of food coloring from the box of four colors I could buy at the grocery and only use the blue, so we finally just gave up on it and for several weeks we haven’t put anything but our normal Apple Cider Vinegar in the water.

Granted, it’s summer time and our bottles spend a few hours a day in direct sunlight, but the algae growth has been impressive! I could scrub those bottles every other day and they’d still not be clean. (If only I could figure a way to market algae – we have been able to produce it!)

Last week after examining the cuts on my hands from scrubbing the bottles – yet again – I broke down and ordered blue food coloring off of Amazon. It arrived yesterday and I’ve been happily dripping the coloring in the water again. I have no scientific proof that this works, but from our real-life assessment, a few drops of blue could be what you need to fight the algae growth in your water bottles, too!

Tagged: algae growth, blue food coloring, bunnies, bunny, livestock, rabbits, water bottles