Beware of frenemies.Even fish who should be compatible with others can turn into bullies.Avoid stress for your fish by keeping a consistent schedule for issues such as feeding, hours of light and water changes. Fish, like most animals, fare best when their world runs on a fairly predictable timetable. To give your fish the best chance at living a full life, follow these recommendations: While fish come to our tanks with a somewhat predetermined shelf life, that time can be shortened or extended based on factors such as the water quality, tank mates, susceptibility to disease and housing obstacles. Environmental Indicators that Determine How Long Fish Live These fish live a comparatively shorter life span, only about three-to-five years. Live-bearing fish like guppies, mollies and platys are common in the community fish tank and readily reproduce in captivity. Other egg-layers like catfish, silverdollars and goldfish have been able to live for 10 years or longer in home aquariums. These egg-laying fish tend to live longer than live-bearing fish.Īquarium fish such as tetras, hatchetfish and gouramis are all egg-layers and can reach a life-span of about five years. Salmon make a long and treacherous journey back to the area where they were born to spawn and then usually die within days. For example, Atlantic salmon begin life in freshwater and eventually swim out into the open ocean to grow and mature for about five years. Fish have all sorts of strategies to ensure that reproduction happens and these strategies are closely tied to lifespan. Passing genes on to the next generation is nature’s ultimate goal. Reproductive Indicators that Determine How Long Fish Live These large fish are the elephants in the aquarium. It is true that larger fish like plecos, Oscars and clown loach have a longer life expectancy than small fish like bettas or killifish. We can take this assertion and apply it to tropical fish as well. The elephant lives a more efficient and longer life due to slower metabolism. West explains that if a mouse and an elephant both have the same number of heart beats in their respective lifetimes, the difference in life expectancy would be determined by the rate of their metabolism. West puts cells of organisms on an even playing field and then scales their needs by a factor related to their physical size. Geoffrey West has made a correlation between size and cell efficiency and applies methods he uses to determine the energy needs of different-sized cities to the way living organisms use energy. Size Indicators that Determine How Long Fish Live While determining the life expectancy for individual fish can be more of a guessing game, we can use some indicators about size, reproduction and the environment to give some broad determinations. When we pose the question of how long our fish will live, we need to consider how well the fish is fit for life genetically and then assess the environmental risks. Environmental factors including disease, predation, drought and starvation are also at play in determining the lifespan of an animal. You may be searching for the answer to the ultimate question, “How long will my fish live?” Scientists around the globe have dedicated their careers to studying lifespans of people and animals to determine why some animals, like Galapagos tortoises, can live well over 100 years while a field mouse only lives two or three years.Īn animal’s life span is affected by a number of genetic factors including physical size, heart efficiency, metabolism, age of reproductive maturity and length of reproductive viability.
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