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Some fish facts

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Some fish facts:
The best way to keep an animal like a fish healthy is to know how it makes it's living.
We are after all very distant relatives of fish (if you believe Darwin) so we should have some sort of understanding of the way they feel.
We don’t see the way fish see, we don’t feel the way fish feel, and we also don’t eat the way fish eat. Fish don’t have tongues and they don’t "really" chew. (Try chewing without using your tongue) They bite a piece of food, then spit out smaller pieces and bite them again until they can get the food small enough so they can swallow it. Humans, as air breathing animals living on a flat surface only have to be concerned about going forward, backward and from side to side. Fish on the other hand add to that up and down. That “up and down” movement not only comes into play while swimming around aimlessly but also hunting and being hunted. At a moments notice a fish must determine which way to go to evade a predator. It has many choices and its tiny brain determines this effortlessly.
Fish can use a number of fins to swim with and they also have two means of buoyancy control. A fish’s liver is full of oil, oil floats and allows the fish to be just slightly heavier then water. Without its liver a fish would sink. Most fish also have a swim bladder so that they can become neutrally buoyant, that’s why a fish like a clownfish can remain perfectly motionless in the water without using its fins. A fish can control the volume of air in it’s bladder to a certain extent and some fish like freshwater lungfish and beta’s can use it to breathe.
Sharks do not have a swim bladder and must keep swimming to remain afloat, but a shark has a huge liver that could be ¼ of its weight, this is full of oil for buoyancy. A shark also lacks any bones so it is lighter than a bony fish.
Fish also can “feel” things from a distance. Some call this “remote feel” or “remote senses”. All real fish have a thin line starting from their head and running down their sides to their tail. This “lateral line” is directly connected to a fish’s brain and allows the fish to “feel” objects all around and even behind it. That’s why it is difficult to catch a fish with a net, even with the lights out. Most fish can feel the “echo” of water pressure bouncing off an object similar to how sonar works and many fish can sense the electric field created by the mussels of other animals. Sharks are experts at this and hammer head shark, with the large sensory organ across their wide head are the masters.
If you notice, fish never crash into the glass walls of their tank, even in total darkness.
And from the angle fish are viewing the glass; they can’t see it because they can see right through it just as we can see in from the outside.
Large schools of fish like sardines can swim fractions of an inch from each other while turning and twisting in unison, and they can do this without looking at their neighbor.
Many of the fish we commonly keep can dive into a coral head without getting a scratch and some fish can hunt in complete darkness. If a fish loses an eye, it barely notices this would be disability and gets on with its life like nothing happened.
Some fish have no eyes and get along just fine.
Fish also have no real noses but they detect odors better than we do and they can tell where the origin of those odors are even in a tank with the water swirling around them or in the sea with the tides and waves.
If you put food in a tank, the fish immediately know where it is. Crustaceans can find the food even sooner due to their even better detection systems.
These are just some things to think about as we check out our fish. They are perfectly suited to their surroundings, much better than we are.
I just thought some here would find this interesting as these are things that keep me up at night.

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  1. melev's Avatar
    Thanks Paul, that was very interesting. The fishes' lateral line sensor allows them to school together with great precision.
  2. Paul B's Avatar
    I am glad you thought it was interesting, this is part 2 if you are still interested.

    Most of us are so different from fish that there are only a few similarities even though they are our distant cousin. Of course not all fish are the same and the oldest fish are not truely fish, True fish have bones somewhat like us, but not exactly. All of our bones are connected together by cartilidge but in fish, the fins are not connected to anything but muscle. The tail is connected to the spine but not any of the other fins. Sharks and rays have no bones, only cartilage. Their internal structures are also different as is their immune system and lack of a swim bladder. The swim bladder in most fish (but not all) allows the fish to maintain neutral buoyancy or it's ability to stay in one place in the water without sinking.
    Sharks and rays have a large liver filled with oil that helps them but they do sink if they stop swimming. Fish like lungfish and betta's have a swim bladder that is connected to their mouth so they can and do use it for breathing as they come from muddy, low oxygen water. Some other bony fish that don't have swim bladders are tuna and makeral. They swim so fast that they don't need one as their fins are shaped to guide the fish where they want to go and there is no need for them to float as they never stop swimming.
    The vast majority of fish have no direct control over their swim bladder and the air in it is controlled by the air that is disolved in the fishes bloodstream and is exuded into the bladder.
    I talk a lot about the fishes immune system. It is my favorite topic and I feel it is vastly overlooked in our hobby. A fishes immune system is more complicated than ours. A fish makes macrophages (that attack bacteria, viruses and paracites) in a few different places. They use their spleen, (as we do) but they also use their kidneys, gills, skin, guts and gonads. Remember a fish is bathed in disease laden water and bacteria, paracites and viruses can swim better then they can fly.
    Fish do not have sweat glands but they do have mucous glands. Mucous is secreted by all fish it is part of their immune system. Remember paracites attach to the fishes skin and gills so fish have evolved to manufacture macrophages right in their mucous. Our skin is mostly dead cells that we shed all the time, but a fishes skin is all alive, all the way through. It is protected in most fish by scales, or body armor. Fishes skin is clear, but containes chromatophores that allow the animal to change color.If anyone is still interested here are some fish things I have learned over my life. I am not a fish doctor but I have operated on a number of them. They all made it and sent me thank you cards.

    I will add to this at another time as most (if not all) of you will find it boring. If a fish dies, I usually dissect it to see what killed it. It is not easy with a 1/2" fish. So if you are not interested in fish biology, skip over this and go and eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
  3. melev's Avatar
    Mmmm. Peanut butter.
  4. snorkeler's Avatar
    Super interesting post!! I had never thought about why fish never hit the aquaruim glass walls, but if you think it is impressive for they can't see it! They had to have some way of knowing the glass was there.