Yep, fish food is considered to be in that "organic" category.
Water changes will only remove what is dissolved in the water column. A water change does not prevent "muck" from building up.
If the owner can afford the water consumption costs, then the best option is to do 8~10%
daily, not weekly, water change or a flow through system.
Ya keep your DOCs down by maintaining a properly built pond and filtration system. A properly built pond will never allow fish food to remain in the pond for long at all nor allow any waste nor any floating debris remain in the water column long at all. This is the primary source of the DOCs. Not all mechanical filtration devices are equal in performance. If you can see the DOC foam, then it can be easily controlled through a protien skimmer.
A very excellent and expensive pond setup that would do quite fine without water changes would have a higher pond turn over rate, extra bottom drains that feed a computerized self-cleaning rotary drum filter (RDF), a wet/dry filter, proper water current management, floating debris skimmers, ozone protien skimmers, properly sized UV device, and a specialized carbon filter to remove any extra toxins. This system, even though quite expensive, would actually involve zero water changes and only checked the RDFs gauge's and spray nozzles.
A water change would only create a mini-cycle due to the abuse or sterilization of an of inefficient bio-filter. The koi keepers that keep quite expensive koi actually implement flow through systems, which are around 10~15%
daily constant water changes.
mariobrothersleeve said:
How to you get your toc down if you dont do wcs? Mechanical isnt the way, i read your other fourms about partical size. So you base your cleaning for a texas winter by just cleaning the bottom 2 times a year? Its seems to good to be true, 5 minutes a day 2 cleanings a year...... Sounds like a weekend worrior
For a cheaper route, get a sieve and a pressurized mechanical fine polishing filter. It literally takes just 2 minutes for these two filters to properly flush. The approximately extra 3 minutes would take into account simply emptying the skimmer basket, if this type of skimmer is implemented and testing/dosing the KH, if needed; a skimmer can actually be installed where the basket is bypassed and the debris is pulled into a specially designed suction-pump side sieve.
Of course, the various DIY filters will take longer to clean, but this is also one reason why they're cheaper to build. If your fabricating skills are quite advanced, then ya might be able to build something quite nice.