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Plenipotentiary-at-large
Your daughter's not practicing chemistry or feeding experiments by any chance?
Can't be done as far as I know unless you specifically extinguish the beneficial bacteria. Barring some sort of chemical or antibiotic treatment, this notion of a filter meltdown strikes me as an extremely unlikely explanation for a tank 'crash' as the bacteria don't simply up and stop doing what they do unless they're all dead, or they get cut out of the loop by a power outage or other circumstance (blockage) that changes water flow so that they're no longer looped in to normal/desired circulation of water in the tank.
Far more likely seems that the filtration's 'capacity' threshold was overwhelmed either by gradual build-up or sudden spike of waste, or by a change in tank conditions that released toxins faster than they could be broken down (the pockets of gas theory).
Fish are generally hard to kill or our hobby wouldn't be as popular as it is. As you know they can handle a wide variety of conditions so long as those conditions change slowly as opposed to suddenly, so other than abrupt fluctuations in water parameters or a precipitous drop in dissolved oxygen levels, the only other real candidate for a causing a crash (at least that I can think of that might apply here) is a pH spike. You guys don't buffer your water as I recall so unless you didn't do water changes for a really long time and were just topping off the tank this seems an unlikely cause.
With all respect, I don't believe good bacteria can "go AWOL". Die or be overwhelmed by conditions, yes, disappear, no. Or so I imagine. If someone knows otherwise would love to hear about it.
Can't be done as far as I know unless you specifically extinguish the beneficial bacteria. Barring some sort of chemical or antibiotic treatment, this notion of a filter meltdown strikes me as an extremely unlikely explanation for a tank 'crash' as the bacteria don't simply up and stop doing what they do unless they're all dead, or they get cut out of the loop by a power outage or other circumstance (blockage) that changes water flow so that they're no longer looped in to normal/desired circulation of water in the tank.
Far more likely seems that the filtration's 'capacity' threshold was overwhelmed either by gradual build-up or sudden spike of waste, or by a change in tank conditions that released toxins faster than they could be broken down (the pockets of gas theory).
Fish are generally hard to kill or our hobby wouldn't be as popular as it is. As you know they can handle a wide variety of conditions so long as those conditions change slowly as opposed to suddenly, so other than abrupt fluctuations in water parameters or a precipitous drop in dissolved oxygen levels, the only other real candidate for a causing a crash (at least that I can think of that might apply here) is a pH spike. You guys don't buffer your water as I recall so unless you didn't do water changes for a really long time and were just topping off the tank this seems an unlikely cause.
With all respect, I don't believe good bacteria can "go AWOL". Die or be overwhelmed by conditions, yes, disappear, no. Or so I imagine. If someone knows otherwise would love to hear about it.
