Can you drown a fish?

Question

can you drown a fish IN water? like, ive heard you can if you drag it backwards by the tail, but does that work, and are there any other ways? (and yes, this is important, i need it for a recearch paper)

Answer 1

Simply, yes, fish can drown. There are many ways, though. Certain fish (Anabatoids) like Betta, Gouramis, and Leopard Ctenopoma (as well as many species of Catfish) need atmospheric air to breath (using their labyrinth organ which is similar to a set of lungs). If they cannot get air, they will drown. Water with little or no dissolved oxygen (i.e.: overcrowded tanks, stagnant water, water in a room with little or no oxygen), the fish will not have enough oxygen to take in through its gills, and drown. Also, toxic compounds like ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate as well as pollution or gill damage can prevent fishes' gills from functioning properly, leading to drowning.

Soop Nazi

Answer 2

Can You Drown A Fish

Answer 3

Yes a fish can drown in water. If there is not enough oxygen in the water a fish will drown. For example, if you have a fish tank and you use boiled water for the tank, you can kill your fish because boiling the water removes the oxygen content, so the fish can drown. Also, if you have a fish tank and you never clean it and don't aerate it and let gunk build up on the surface so the fish can't get to the air and allow the toxic elements in the water build up, your fish will basically "suffocate", which is the same thing as drowning in the water. A fish can also drown if it has a parasite or disease which blocks its gills so that it cannot process the oxygen in the water. Usually when a fish dies from lack of oxygen, it's not termed "drowning", however. One says that the fish "suffocated". The term drowning is usually reserved for non-aquatic creatures that die in the water from lack of oxygen. A fish will not suffocate or "drown" from being pulled backwards in the water unless you pull it so fast that it can't process the amount of water flowing through its gills. You would probably need a speedboat to do that. Most fish can swim backwards, they just don't do it for long periods of time for the same reason people don't walk backwards most of the time. They don't have eyes on their butts!

Answer 4

The best way to figure this out is to decide what the term "Drowning" and "Suffocating" really means. Fish take water in through their gills to gather oxygen in that water to breathe. While humans need oxygen, too, we don't need to filter water to get it. now, if we were deprived of oxygen, we would suffocate. if we were deprived of oxygen underwater, our muscles forcefully kick in to breathe on instinct, causing water intake to the lungs and later Drowning occurs. Fish are similar, in that if there was no oxygen in that water or if the water was bad/toxic to the fish, then the gills would fail to function properly. some fish have lungs, called a labyrinth organ. These fish would, by DEFINITION, be able to drown. but this isn't the case to ALL fish. fish without this organ wouldn't drown, because the water is going where it's supposed to- through the gills. This, by DEFINITION is considered suffocating.

Now, i seen some people mention that forcing water through a fishes' gills would cause it to drown. THIS IS NOT TRUE. forcing more water through the gills than normal causes 1 of 2 things: less oxygen being transferred in the process, or TOO MUCH oxygen being transferred. if the latter, then the fish would be poisoned by having too much oxygen in the body. for a better picture though, i will more or less believe option 1 is a more appropriate idea. with less oxygen.... yes i'm saying it again.... comes Suffocation.
Hopefully this helped. it seems like a topic not normally brought out into conversation, but I get annoyed when people aren't thinking about what they say before say it... so you're welcome.

Answer 5

Well technically you can't drown a fish. As others were saying, if you get water into the gills of a fish it could drown, but that's not true. That would be suffocation, not drowning. The definition of drowning is suffocation from the filling of lungs, however fish don't have lungs. They instead get deprived of oxygen, which is suffocating.

Answer 6

Yes, fish can drown in water. However, most people just call it suffocating. It happens most easily when you see too many fish in a tank and there is not enough dissolved oxygen for them all. Goldfish, for example, produce a lot of ammonia. Ammonia in water (and nitrite and nitrate to a lesser extent) prevent them from breathing the air in the water. Then, they are often seen gasping for air at the surface--like a drowning person--before they run out of oxygen and suffocate (drown) to death. This is why it is critical to not overstock a fish and to let the tank cycle before adding more fish.

Answer 7

Fish can asphyxiate, but they can't drown. As to your math problem: You have no fish left, because you didn't start out with any. Your friend may or may not have had 30, but if she said she drowned 5 of them, I gather she's a liar, so who knows if she had fish or not?

Answer 8

Well, you can drown a fish. I was fishing as the cottage I caught the fish but it took me a while to get the hook out. I just threw the fish in without giving it a chance to get the water flowing slowly back into it's gills. It hit the water too fast and drowned because it didn't have time to "breath" It died. I felt terrible and from then on I held it underwater until it swam away on it's own.
I've never heard of dragging it backwards.
I hope this helped. it's kind of hard to explain, I hope I did a god job, and good luck with your paper.

Answer 9

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RE:
Can you drown a fish?
can you drown a fish IN water? like, ive heard you can if you drag it backwards by the tail, but does that work, and are there any other ways? (and yes, this is important, i need it for a recearch paper)

Answer 10

Yes, a fish will drown if it is in water with no dissolved oxygen or its' gills are blocked. Dragging it backwards would only work if no water flows over the gills.