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Do fish urinate?

16K views 24 replies 9 participants last post by  kaedeb 
#1 ·
I understand this is probably a totally stupid question but i'm honestly wondering... Do fish pee / urinate?

thanks for the answers to my silly question in advance :)
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#3 ·
See I have guppies, and when they are nearing birth / during birth you can see a clear fluid coming out i'm a small stream so to speak from the anal area. I've always figured it is some type of embryonic fluid or simply much like a human before birth the mothers water breaks I have been looking at it like that.
However yesterday I thought I saw my male doing it too. It was however a much smaller amount and not for a prolonged time or anything so I have just been wondering. Sometimes I have seen females (pregnant and non) do it also which has simply made me wonder :)
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#6 ·
Fish get rid of ammonia via the gills. However, it's done by passive diffusion. That means that the ammonia concentration of the fish can not be less than that of the water
 
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#10 ·
So that is most likely what I an seeing? If you imagine a petrol slick how it looks like thick water almost that's the best way to describe it that I can think of right now that might be the stuff.
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#11 ·
They do, very prolific pee-ers, up to a third of their body mass per day. It's not something that many like to think about when playing in the tank water. :roll:

Jeff.
 
#12 ·
I said that to my fiancé and he laughed at me the other day and said I was playing in pee!
Still don't know of that I'd what I am seeing have had no confirmation or otherwise but who knows... God knows.when ever I have a chance i'm on the chair infront of the tank admiring its occupants but it is certainly something you would have to look closely at to see
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#13 ·
Yah, just think, if you peed out a third of your body weight each day, it would most certainly look like water. I know when I was drinking a Canadian gallon of water a day, well.... you can figure out the rest.:roll:

This is one of the reasons that water stability and correctness for the fish is so important.

Jeff.
 
#14 ·
Haha I don't know how much a Canadian gallon is, I didn't even know it was different from a standard gallon
Also most likely because we use the metric system.

It looks like thick water but the petrol thing my analogy is like the way you can see it you know how its almost shiney like an oil slick in the ocean but its clear. Looks thick though
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#16 ·
Just curious - where did you see that guppies urinate a third of their body mass?
 
#22 ·
I don't know if there is a significant difference between species when it comes to urine released, since it is, as Quantum mentioned earlier, related to osmoregulation. I do know that tetra can expel this much daily.

Urination is the fish's way of getting rid of all the water it takes in via osmosis through the cells, and this is partially determined by the TDS (total dissolved solids, which incudes the GH) in the tank water, one reason why this is so critical. If anyone wants to read a bit further on this, in fairly simple terms, check out my article on the effects of TDS as it it significant to this,
http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/...al-solids-tss-tds-freshwater-aquarium-122027/
and my article on Stress mentions it too:
http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/freshwater-articles/stress-freshwater-aquarium-fish-98852/

Byron.
 
#19 ·
The North American aquarium industry seems to use US gallons. I doubt it makes that much of a difference when using supplements or treatments as most seem to "allow" for three, four and five times overdosing levels anyway. I suspect that it is not an exact science.

Jeff.
 
#24 ·
Byron said 3 times in his writeup he linked - I didn't read the reference to see how that was derived yet.
 
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