How does the temperature of water affect the breathing rate of a fish?

Question

Can someone help me with that? All I know is that they're cold-blooded so their temperature changes with their surroundings, but why does a fish breathe slower when the environment/water gets colder?

Answer 1

Fish are ectotherms. Their rate of metabolism (including breathing) is determined by the environmental temperature, because the rates of all the metabolic processes in the body varies with the temperature. Because the processes occur more slowly, less of the by-product (carbon dioxide) is released. Since it is the amount of carbon dioxide in the blood that drives respiration, less CO2 means lower rates of respiration.

Answer 2

Fish Respiration Rate

Answer 3

Because a fish is ectothermic, it needs to pull its heat in from the outside, and when the water is warmer, they will become more active due to the amount of heat that they are receiving. When it gets cold it is hard for them to get more active because they do not have as much heat. You see this in tropical fish as they will be buzzing around and able to keep going in the warm waters, but when you move further North and event to the Arctic, there is a shark known as the Greenland which is cold-blooded and needs to pull heat in from the outside. But, since it is So cold, it isn't very livid and moves very sluggishly and is happy creeping along the bottom, hulling it 20 foot long body.

Answer 4

Fish don't breathe! They absorb oxygen through the thin membrane of their gills - that's NOT breathing. Colder water holds more dissolved oxygen, so the oxygen can more easily diffuse INTO the membrane (higher concentration to lower). Warmer water holds less dissolved oxygen, so there is a less steep concentration gradient for the oxygen to diffuse into the gill membrane. The colder the water, the more oxygen is available in one pass of water over the gills (due to the movement of the operculum [gill cover]) so less volume of water has to pass over the gill surface to get the oxygen necessary.

Answer 5

Higher temperatures will cause fish to increase their rate of breathing because cold water can dissolve more gases than warm water can. (Like warm soda will flatten faster than cold will). The fast-moving molecules of warm water force more air/oxygen out of solution, so the fish gets less with each breath, and it compensates by increasing its rate.

Answer 6

The warmer the water the less oxygen it can hold. Therefore, the fish breth faster.