• Question: why cant fishes survive in distilled water??

    Asked by jessicaa97 to Hermine, Katy, Laura, Nathalie, Paula on 15 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Nathalie Pettorelli

      Nathalie Pettorelli answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Hi there,

      Have a look there – very well explained 😉 http://www.questionswithanswer.com/why/why_are_fishes_not_able_to_survive_in_distilled_water.html

    • Photo: Paula Salgado

      Paula Salgado answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      There’s 2 reasons:

      1. distilled water doesn’t have enough oxygen for the fish to breathe

      2. distilled water lacks micronutrients like salts and minerals that are essential for the fish.

      Even tap water has only a small amount of oxygen, about 5ml of O2 (g) per liter of water, but fish can “harvest” that little amount. Distilled water has an even slower amount, so there’s not enough oxygen it for the fish to breathe.

      If you add an air pump blowing air into the water, then the fish will have enough oxygen.

      If you also add tablets of salts and micronutrients to the water, then the fishes will survive.

      But at that point, it’s just easier to use tap, filtered water, no? 😉

    • Photo: Laura Dixon

      Laura Dixon answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      This has already been well answered by others – nothing I can add!
      Good question tho 🙂

    • Photo: Katy Mee

      Katy Mee answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      I don’t really know much about the biology of fish but i suspect it’s something to do with it being so pure compared to normal water….

    • Photo: Hermine Schnetler

      Hermine Schnetler answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Hi Jessicaa97

      Could you survive without bugs and bacteria? You might think this is great idea, but it’s easy for man to forget that he is an animal in a living world, our interactions with all the others organism are vital to us, even if many of these interactions are so small we can’t see them. Distilled water removes all the impurities from the water, many of which are essential for micro-organisms in the water which you can’t even see. Like us, the fish needs all these organisms to be healthy. It might be able to breath and survive for a while in the distilled water, but not live a very long life.

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