OK, the mistake regarding the ‘daily’ discharge came from me!
On reflection I should have said ‘approximately 365 times a year’ instead.
I only stated this to give some guidelines to the owners in order to try and avoid confusion.
In truth it’s impossible to give ‘general rule of thumb answer’ as to how often and how many times my units should be discharged.
All ponds are unique; all owners are unique as are stocking rates, feeding rates and water temperature differentials.
The good news is that all owners can determine how often and when ‘their’ units need attention by taking a look at the face of the brush box.
If it is reasonably clean then no attention is required.
If this is not the case then a discharge will be necessary.
In the cooler water temperatures of winter perhaps a 4 to 7 day discharge is all that’s necessary.
Whilst in warm temperatures with high stocking and feeding rates a discharge may need to be carried out twice or three times a day.
The individual owner makes all the rules here.
One thing is certain, my units can never ‘block’ and nor will their be any drop in filter water level as a result of being left unattended for some weeks.
However, like any other system, they will get very dirty if this is allowed to take place and perhaps it would take more than one single discharge to get the unit back to being as good as new again.
As to the amount of water being sent to waste by discharging the units, this is certainly no more than discharging any other system ‘correctly’ and often it’s significantly less.
Even with an Eric Four unit running a 4,500-gallon pond, the entire discharge amounts to 115 gallons and this represents only a 2.5% water change, which I would expect to be the minimum water change necessary on this volume of water on a daily basis.
After a single discharge the drop in pond water is hardly discernable; the water pump can be re-started immediately and the constant trickle will gradually replace the discharged water very slowly.
Hoping this has cleared matters up.
Waddy.