Rain water, water changes

[duanes]

I consider water changes to be "the" most important factor in all keeping of aquariums.
But here where I live, the municipal water plant (desalinization type) is often down for a month or more at a time, and can go down at a moments notice, requiring serious almost draconian conservation measures. I imagine that's the way it is in the western US these days.
During these outages water for taking showers, washing clothes, and even flushing toilets is hard to come by.
For me, this means always under stocking tanks, heavy plantings (to aid in nitrate management), and whenever possible taking full advantage of rain events.
It is the rainy season here now, so the tanks, get almost daily large water changes.

The sump, is in the yard, out in the open to take advantage, and allowed to overflow, as a partial water change with any rain.

A short piece of gutter, wedged in the foliage catches and directs roof water direct to the main tank.

 

[duanes]

It's the rainy season again here now, so I've augmented the gutter piece, with some split bamboo branches (they are mostly hollow, so carry water nicely.
It's been raining every other day minimum, so probably changed over 50% of the systems 300 gallons without any effort over the last week.
The bamboo, and the foliage, do tend to inundate the tank with tannins, but I accept the ani bacterial qualities of tannins, as a trade off for the temporary dark tint they add to the tank water.
The rain drips off the foliage and into the tank, on the west end of the main tank.

And once the tank and sump are full, water overflows to the yard thru an emergency continuous over flow contraption, on the east end of the sump.
It only starts to overflow when water surface reaches the hole in the in sump, vertical cyclander.

This emergency overflow also works well, if I get distracted during a normal water change, and absentmindedly start to overflow the system when refilling.
An often not a rare occurrence.