Bacteria colonies?

There are always those rare occasions when a tank will suddenly crash and the biological filtration will fail. Outside of surface area, and a fuel source, what are the necessary conditions/parameters for your nitrifying bacteria to grow and thrive in? What outside of medications could cause a massive death in your bacteria colony?

Bacteria colonies?
In addition to the fuel source and a surface on which to grow, the bacteria require O2 and a proper temperature range. Any temperature which will support fish will also support the bacteria of course, so that's never a problem in aquariums. Adequate O2 is also not a problem in an aquarium as enough does diffuse through the surface even without filtration or water motion. There may be a few micro-nutrients required as well, but I have never seen any studies on that and never seen water what wouldn't support the bacteria, so it's doubtful you could ever have a problem in that regard.





Lots of things can be bactericidal in proper levels. Too much salt (or in the case of marine tanks not enough), copper, lead, mercury, chlorine (basically any metal) as well as of course most any antibiotics as you well know. Those would be the most common causes in aquariums, but many other compounds can also be to blame.





MM
Reply:Chlorine will kill bacteria. An oxygen starved tank can kill it too. The only legitimate excuse for a crash is a power outage, in which case water will stop moving through the filter and oxygen and ammonia would stop reaching it. Any other reasons I could think of are completely avoidable.





The bacteria Grows best in warmer water then cooler.





In case of a crash, one is best to go to the fish store and get filter media or gravel from a mature tank, bring this home in a bag of aquarium water, and then add it to their own filter - adding this fresh, living bacteria can make all the difference (and works a million times better then the bottled stuff).
Reply:i personaly dont got a clue ill inform u after i do research on it
Reply:This question can have many answers. The crash that I have experienced came from a few sources. One can be if the water gets to cold, this has a tendency to weaken the bacteria and make it almost dormant.The second is if your filter stops running for a few days, this also can cause the bacteria to become dormant and even start to die off. The obvious is rinsing your filter / media with tap water, this will kill the bacteria immediately. Changing sponge/pads and media at the same time thus having no bacteria left to purge into the tank. I could go on and on but I think you get the idea.
Reply:Some ways that bacteria will crash is by over dosing medications and end up killing the bacteria instead of helping. Also chloring will kill bacteria.
Reply:Another is where your local water supplier cleans out his system, looking to destroy crustaceans and microbiology that builds up in the piping from the filter beds, the chemicals used are small enough to pass through there filtration systems sterilizing the whole lot of course, if it goes through there filtration then even using R.O. (reverse osmosis) doesn't stop it this can wipe out all the cultures in your system. (not only the filter).





It happened twice to me in 2 separate years during May, the coincidence of the date sent me scurrying to the local water facility, who while saying it wasn't harmful to fish, seemed clearly aware what it could do to an enclosed system, there explanation being that the water should flush through the system and then into, in there case, a nearby river. However, for whatever reason (they wouldn't admit) it ended up in the water source going into homes.





AJ