Emptying beats cleaning, which is the part that took me longest to accept. I was deep cleaning a tank I kept topped up, so I was scrubbing a colony I refilled every evening.
Now: tip it out and leave it open every morning, deep clean once a week, and it stays clean with a fraction of the work. The daily thirty seconds replaced a weekly half hour.
The one exception is the wick in evaporative models, which does need replacing on schedule regardless of how careful you are.