Went back to my local fish store to see what they got in for Polys this week and what do I find but another baby endli! Needless to say, he is in a drip bucket right now.
another new Endli
- Thread starter LRM
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This little fella just took its first piece of food. That chunk of beef heart didn't even hit the ground before it was nabbed. I think I have an idea what they were getting fed by the breeder... I've noticed today that after taking a large meal these guys seem to breathe more heavily. At first I was worried and checked my nitrates and nitrites, but they were well within the acceptable range. Any opinions on the matter? All I can figure is that with the increased metabolic energy consumption and growth of the organs to take on and digest a large meal they perhaps need to take in more oxygen?
I noticed the same thing yesterday with my little endli and I was worried he ate a feeder guppy and was breathing hard for a bit.
I'm glad you noticed it too. I'm trying to rationalize it in my head with things that I understand about other organisms.alyssatheurer;3574607; said:
Organs have the potential to grow in size drastically. Take the common sense example of your heart compared to that of an Olympic swimmer. if you both were the same age, weight, height etc, that Olympian's heart would still be substantially bigger.
That doesn't really do much for us in trying to explain what we're seeing. Now since, I've obviously not performed any necropsies here and cannot say definitively that "yes there is an enlargement in organs "x", "y", "z", we can still make this assumption in relative safety.
So I'll go into other examples in the animal world that I'm more familiar with. Take for example the lingual salt glands of a Saltwater crocodile. Mind you, I'm referencing a study performed in the past few years at the University of Queensland. If you take two groups of hatchlings and raise one group in freshwater and the other in saltwater you will find an increase in the size of the cells of the salt glands as well as an increase in the number of mitochondria per cell of about 23% I believe. it might be 27% but thats splitting hairs as far as this discussion goes.
So you're probably thinking, wow, a few cells were bigger and had a couple more mitochondria, big freaking deal. You're absolutely correct, that is a big freaking deal. Because what you will also see in a saltwater croc as it goes from fresh to salt water is that it switches the nitrogenous waste product it produces over to the more metabolically expensive solid urates!!! Just because it switched water types. So why does that matter? It matters because there was an environmental change that caused such a drastic physiological one to occur in the body of this animal.
We're talking about eating though, why breathe heavier after a big meal? Well, I guess the best example I can think of for that is again found in the reptile world. When a snake eats a large meal, how does it digest it so fast. It needs to because if it doesn't, the meal will spoil and rot inside of it and the animal will die. It kind of is a biological imperative that whatever has been swallowed can be quickly digested. I forget when this study was performed but it was in regards to burmese pythons. Researchers found that after a big meal the heart, liver, intestines, stomach etc. increased in size by 1/3(? is that correct, anyone, I can't be positive I remember it correctly). They then atrophy and go back to their normal size after the meal is gone. That is a metabolic explosion! It takes a whole lot of energy to do that.
Energy in an animal all comes down to that wonderful compound, ATP and except for the case of glycolysis, in a catabolic pathway atp synthesis requires the use of oxygen.
So, unless I've really just been typing for a long time about something I'm very wrong about, it makes sense that this could be the reason for heavy breathing after a big meal. Or it could be completely wrong, like I said, I haven't necropsied any fish to look at their organs after big meals.
