Would a saltwater fish die if put in freshwater?

Question

if yes, why? why can't it survive on freshwater? why is it so important for it to necessarily be in saltwater?

Answer 1

Yes it will die. Their bodies have certain amount of salt and electrolytes inside. That level is essential to their lives, this is how they normally live. These element will penetrate the fish's skin and get dissolved in fresh water, causing the level of salts and electrolyte in fish's cells to drop below life-sustaining levels.

Answer 2

Freshwater Fish In Saltwater

Answer 3

Saltwater Fish In Freshwater

Answer 4

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RE:
Would a saltwater fish die if put in freshwater?
if yes, why? why can't it survive on freshwater? why is it so important for it to necessarily be in saltwater?

Answer 5

Some marine fish can be dipped in freshwater baths to relieve stress but that's about it. Mollies can live in fresh and marine tanks because they live in between fresh and ocean water. The reason Marine Fish cannot live in fresh water is because ocean water measures 25% salinity and the PH is 8.0--8.4, which is very hard. The temperature is about a steady 78-80 and is not supposed to go above 80. The ocean water content has a lot of trace minerals also that are not found in all fresh water. Fresh water contains too much phosphates and lots of people who have Marine tanks use RO-(reverse osmosis) water, water that has all the pollutants removed because otherwise corals and other invertebrates will not survive well. Artificial sea salt is sold in pet stores for Marine tanks and Hydrometers are used to measure the salinity.

Answer 6

Yes they would. Salt water is not just made up of Salt, but other elements besides the salt that those fish need to survive.

It's the same reasons why most Freshwater fish do not survive in Salt water. The only exceptions to this are fish in the wild (Like Salmon) who come from both waters, or fish that are near both waters (like up in Washinton state).

Answer 7

Actually, I've heard that for treating some parasite on SW fish, they give them a FW "dip", but don't recall how long. Believe it was several minutes. But long term, meaning longer than that, no, it'll kill them. Because they are acclimated to saltwater not freshwater, that's how their bodies were designed.

Answer 8

OSMOSIS - is why salt water fish cannot be put in freshwater. Saltwater fish let more water into their bodies to flush out the salts. If you put one in fresh water, they would let too much water through and their cells and organs would become too turgid and explode.
Freshwater fish dehydrate internally when put into salty water

Answer 9

Salt water fish have specially designed kidneys and membranes. They cannot expel excess water very easily so all their cells would fill up too much with freshwater.
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Answer 10

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Yes just the same as fresh water fish put in salt water would shrink it has something to do with osmosis where fluids with lower concentrations of substances move to fluids of higher concentrations to balance and because salt water fish are used to not letting much in when they get no salt they swell! look up osmosis for more info! HERE:My attempt at explaining Osmosis and how it effects your fish. OK for the benefit for anyone who cares, in biological systems many membranes are semipermeable so they allow for some particles to pass through but not others. Osmosis is the movement of solvent molecules but not solute particles through this membrane and it does it from a more dilute solution to a more concentrated one. OK to try and put it in more simple terms, water is the solvent molecules and the stuff dissolves in the water (salts etc) are the solute particles. What happens is if you have a high concentration solution on one side of a membrane and a dilute one on the other, the solutions tend to want to equalize, so what happens is that the solvent (water in our case) moves from the dilute side to the concentrated side thus diluting it (and concentrating the side it left) until both are equal. This is what the osmotic pressure is. All right, so with fish, you got lots of membranes. For example you have gills and skin and fins etc. etc. Now with freshwater fish, the insides are more concentrated with stuff then the water around them. Their bodies have salts and stuff in the form of blood, the foods they eat, and whatnot. So freshwater fish are constantly taking in water into their bodies due to osmosis (dilute water comes in to try and dilute their bodies). Therefore freshwater fish constantly have to be "shedding" water from their bodies in order to survive. This happens in several ways including urine and breathing to name a couple. Now when you add salt to your tank water, it raises the concentration of salts in the waters around the fish and so the differences between the concentration of the water and the inside of the fish are reduced some and therefore the osmotic pressure is lowered. Less water is taken in so the fish doesn't have to work as hard to rid their body of this excess water. This is one reason why adding salt to a freshwater tank can be helpful. Your sick fish is already stressed and weakened, so by lowering the osmotic pressure by adding salt, you help your sick fish by giving its body a little easier time in dealing with that problem and more energy towards getting better or healing itself. Marine fish have the exact opposite problem. The ocean has a much higher concentration of salt in it than in the fish's body, so the osmotic pressure is constantly trying to draw water out of the marine fish. Therefore, to keep from dehydrating, a marine fish is always drinking water to replace lost water. Marine fish have ways of getting rid of the excess salt. So next time someone asks you "Do fish drink?" now you know the answer and it depends on if you are talking about freshwater or marine fish. ;)

Answer 11

Yes, it is true, however not in every case. The salt water fish requires certain amount of salt to stay alive. Fresh water doesn’t have such content which is actually required. Therefore, it will die when put in the fresh water. Well, the concept basically is termed as osmosis. For fresh fish, you can buy from Hamviseafoods.