I saw a person selling goldfish in this hot summer in New Delhi, and it got me intrigued about fish and marine life, like can they see the water they are living in? If I take them out of the water and keep splashing water on them will they survive?
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Depends a **LOT** on the fish. Could be 10 liters, could be 100 liters, could be 1000 liters or more.
Something like a Betta fish needs very little – maybe 10 liters (around an absolute minimum) to live a long time. A full grown goldfish OTOH can get huge and also generates a lot of waste. For a goldfish to not die young you’ll need around a hundred liters. For longer life probably closer to 300+ liters, if not more.
Many marine fish need a lot more water than their size would suggest because they are either active swimmers or need territory and a place to hide or they’ll stress out and die. 60ish liters is about the absolute minimum for a marine aquarium with small fish.
In both cases the fish need a biome that can process their waste. They produce ammonia as part of their metabolism, but ammonia is very toxic to them. Fortunately there are bacteria that convert this into less toxic nitrites, and then other bacteria that convert that to even less toxic nitrates, and then other bacteria that convert that into nitrogen that escapes as gas. Anyway – you need enough rock, sand, mud to house these bacteria to process this waste, or the fish will die due to poor water quality.
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