Another mistake that aquarists make is not doing proper filter maintenance. The primary purpose of the filter is to trap unwanted matter that is circulating in your aquarium water with the intention of removing it.
When filters are not changed or rinsed periodically the purpose of the filter is defeated. The impurities are not removed from the water, but merely collected in one place where they continue to contaminate the system.
Not maintaining your filter has another affect on you aquarium. The filter not only provides mechanical filtration, it also is a source of biological filtration. The filter media is a cultivating grounds for the bacteria that produce the nitrogen cycle in your tank. As the media becomes clogged, the bacteria in the filter have less and less water available to them. This in effect weakens the ability of your aquarium to process ammonia and nitrite.
The situation is worsened because as the filter becomes more and more clogged with impurities, those impurities begin to decay and result in more and more ammonia in the system. The same system that has a reduced capacity to process that ammonia!
The third impact of improper filter maintenance is the loss of chemical filtration. If you are using carbon or some other chemical removing media in your filter, the media loses its effectiveness over time. There are two reasons for this: first, the media works by chemically binding the impurity to the media to remove it from the water. There are a finite number of binding sites in a given quantity of media and over time all those sites become used.
The second reason that the media loses effectiveness is similar to the reason that the media loses its biological effectiveness: the media becomes clogged and the remaining chemical sites are not available to the water.
I hope this will give you some incentive to do regular filter maintenance. What do you think? Please leave me a comment below.