Major Crash?

[VoodooChild]

Howdy folks. It's a wonderful day. Feelin' good. Anyways, I've heard alot about systems "crashing". Now, what exactly is a major crash? What does it constitute and what causes it? Do you just have a massive die-off when the alkilinity bottoms out or what exactly? I know this is broad, but thanks for any info.
'Nother question. At the base of the sand, against the glass, about 0"-2" over the DSB, are hundreds and hundreds of tiny white things. They're very fast, never travel too high up, and there must be 4 dozen per square inch. Anyone know what they are?

[OrionGirl]

Sounds like pods. They usually don't go very far from cover. There are many varieties. Harmless, sign of a healthy tank. They are not always visible in other tanks, since there are many critters that dine on them. We have tons in the invert only tank, a few in the other systems.

I've never heard a crash indicate a specific cause for failure, but rather, indicates that SOMETHING was serious imbalanced and resulted in a mass die off. For example, the power failure that lasted 4 days caused my tank to crash. Or, my kalkwasser dosing system fouled up and dumped the entire gallon of mix in at once, causing the tank to crash.

[votek]

hehehe...

i was gonna say copepods but orion posted while I was reading ;)