Water Changes Woes

I am finally working on making my life easier as a hobbyist or to make it more appropriate, even 'more convenient' in keeping fishes. Not that I am complaining really as I still rely on my present filtration set-up (think Eheim pro3/pro3es and several liters of Siporax, Substrat Pro and even Aquaclay) to maintain the different fish tanks. But despite the top-of-the-line equipment and filter media - one can never avoid regular water changes for two reasons:

1. Reduce the nitrate level (and other substances) as it can never be totally eliminated from a 'closed system' not even with aquatic plants - most of which have preference for ammonia from a recent study and which is contrary to the popular notion. I haven't worked with denitrators so I can not say much of its effects at the moment.

2. Accumulation of organic by-products like ammonia make water acidic as time passes as buffering properties of freshwater is used up to neutralize the acids. Water changes also increases the buffering capacity and replaces consumed minerals.

So what is there to do?

Water changes are time consuming (and laborious) especially if you are dealing with overcrowded tanks and big volumes of water. As I wrote earlier, even the best filtration systems can only do so much - for example, an Eheim filter provides reliability (translated as peace of mind), convenience (best for those who got not much time) and (electrical) cost efficiency while Siporax which is made of sintered glass compared to an ordinary ceramic ring have an surface area upto 30x for beneficial bacteria (1 liter of Siporax is roughly equivalent upto 34 liters of an ordinary one) - thus we are talking space here. In the long run, using both Eheim and Siporax leads to greater cost-benefit ratio.

The first solution I depended on is to do 'overfiltration' which is really ironic as there is really no such thing in a closed system but from my experience, this atleast made the frequency of equipment maintenance and water changes less often. At the minimum 6 months for maintenance (change of filter wool) upto a year and water changes atleast once weekly or every two weeks.

Another adaptation is to set up a system for easier water drainage and refilling but this kept me waiting too as my inline dechlorinator (with a 1 micron prefilter and activated carbon blocks) but was still time-consuming and accidental overflows are common especially when one is multi-tasking.

All these years, I followed the above solutions and have been trying out ideas how to make it more efficient (and convenient). Fortunately, a week or two earlier, after a heavy downpour and caught in the flooded streets again, I spend a little time in a nearby hardware store chain and to my surprise, they were selling a Melnor water timer. Yes, you read that right - I wrote 'water timer.' It is one of those things that can make life easier for the hobbyist especially those who do ponds or at the minimum 50 to 100 gallons of water changes. The manual water timer basically shuts itself off after delivering the amount of water one picks from the dial. Now that is a big leap towards having more time and should be worry-free refilling of the pond.