Osmoregulation

[Gouldian]

Hi guys,

Just wanted to share some articles explaning Osmoregulation and ways of subjecting our fishes to right enviroment so as to reduce stress.

http://groups.msn.com/Breedingtropicalfish...regulation.msnw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmoregulation

http://www.ca.uky.edu/wkrec/RedDrumPhysiology.htm

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~delbeek/delb11.html

HTH

[Achilles Tang]

Thanks for sharing!

[Achilles Tang]

I took away this information from what I read as a good reminder & info for my FOWLR tank:

"Since marine fish must constantly expel various solutes,

such as sodium and chloride ions, against an osmotic gradient, a

great deal of energy is required. Therefore, anything that you can do

to lower the osmotic gradient will benefit the fish in terms of

energy expenditure. The simplest way of doing this is to lower the

salinity of the water as much as possible, particularly for a fish in

distress (i.e. diseased). This alone can sometimes be enough to ease

their burden. Of course any such change must be extremely gradual and

must not get to the point where the fish is in obvious stress.

Another problem comes when invertebrates are added, especially the

soft-bodied ones such as anemones and corals; a drop in salinity can

be disastrous for them. Since marine fish produce very concentrated

urine, their waste products can pollute a tank far quicker than a

freshwater fish which produces much more dilute wastes. That is why

you can usually put in many more freshwater fish than marine fish in

the same volume of water. That is why paying attention to the water

quality of a marine tank is so much more critical than in a

freshwater tank."