Do fish drink water?

Mudbeaver

New member
For are new commers;

Fish do drink water, but how they consume it depends on where they live. Water gets into a fish's body through osmosis, the process in which water diffuses from a higher to a lower concentration.

For example, if there is more water outside of a cell than inside, water will try to flow into the cell until there is the same concentration of water on either side of the cell's membrane. The body of a fish acts the same way, either absorbing or losing water depending on its surroundings.

Kidneys At Work

Whether a fish absorbs or loses water is based on the fact that all fish must maintain a certain amount of salt in their bodies to stay healthy. Fish that live in fresh water have a higher concentration of salt in their bodies than the surrounding water.

Consequently, water continuously flows into the fish's body to attempt to dilute the amount of salt in the fish until it is equal to the amount of salt in the surrounding water. Since fish cannot allow their salt content to be diminished, their kidneys work overtime to expel excess water in the form of urine.

Salt Water Fish

Ocean fish have the opposite problem. Surrounded by salt water, their bodies contain a relatively lower concentration of salt than the ocean water. In this case, osmosis causes the fish to constantly lose water in order to equalize salt concentration inside and outside the fish.

To partially compensate for the water loss, ocean fish actually drink water through their mouths. To get rid of the excess salt they take in by drinking seawater, they excrete some salt through cells in their gills.
 
I was expecting a poll. Nice info to add to this section. You should add info about brackish water fish.
 
While the information is nice, just a kind note. If you're just going to copy and paste info from another website it's good practice to include credit to where you copied it from or at least some indication you aren't the author. ;)
 
While the information is nice, just a kind note. If you're just going to copy and paste info from another website it's good practice to include credit to where you copied it from or at least some indication you aren't the author. ;)


Ah yes forgot about that , but everybody knows i'm not that smart,lol. I just found that out by surfing the net and i don't remember where exactly its out there, just type the question and you'll get hundreds of page on the subject from all over. Thats how the net works. Lots of people don't realise that. Type a question the answer is writen in some blogs somewhere in different forms and from different sources i took the best one. Everybody can be a genius with google you just have to know how to use google the right way lol. Cheers.
:bounce1::wave::reading:
 
Ah yes forgot about that , but everybody knows i'm not that smart,lol. I just found that out by surfing the net and i don't remember where exactly its out there, just type the question and you'll get hundreds of page on the subject from all over. Thats how the net works. Lots of people don't realise that. Type a question the answer is writen in some blogs somewhere in different forms and from different sources i took the best one. Everybody can be a genius with google you just have to know how to use google the right way lol. Cheers.
:bounce1::wave::reading:

No, what he meant is that it is a crime (literally) to reprint someone's work and call it your own.

Unless your name is Jeremy Shore, the source of this should be cited. If this were a paraphrasing of the original material, there's some wiggle room. But a word-for-word copy absolutely needs cited.

FWIW, here's the source:
Do Fish Drink: Fish and Osmosis
 
Mudbeaver, thanks for posting the article, I thought it was an interesting and informative read.

^I'm sure that was your original intention for posting it and hoped response.

I'm not being disingenuine in my response in any way. I'm also trying to point out to others where you did right instead of where you did wrong.

If you fault him while already knowing this article and the contents of it I fault you for not making this knowledge more known and question your reason for being on these forums.

I've been on here since 2013 and very active in reading and learning as much as I can... I never read that article, I never knew it's contents.

What he posted is useful to this community (while being illegal in the eyes of the law). In terms of ethics, his stance is correct.
 
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We got our info on this some time ago, I think was in the late eighties? From conversations with two helpful marine biologists and an ichthyologist that we still know well, Jeff Johnson from Q museum.
This is a brief simple thing on the subject that came from those conversations that we eventualy put on our clubs site a while back.
http://southeastqueenslandm.aforumfree.com/t1079-desalinising-salt-controling-organs-in-fish#3632

And to fully appreciate what comes from drinking heaps of what they swim in, a section in here applies as well.
http://southeastqueenslandm.aforumfree.com/t1059-stress-for-marine-reef-aquarium-life#3593
 
:) A few posts have been removed in an attempt to bring this thread back on topic. I think Mr. Mudbeaver has gotten the point about providing credit where credit is due, no need to keep badgering on the matter.
 
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