• @_bcron_
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    514 hours ago

    One of the bigger reasons has to do with the square cube law - as the size of something increases, surface area increases by a factor of 2 but mass increases by a factor of 3, so little fishes have a surface area-to-mass ratio that is quite a bit higher than a larger fish, and they’re more susceptible to abrupt changes in temperature.

    Kinda like how an ice cube will melt a lot faster than a big slab of ice, the core temperature of some small fish like a goldfish is gonna change more rapidly than the core temperature of a big fish like a trout so they tend to be a lot more finnicky in regard to significant and instantaneous changes to temperature and stuff. A larger fish might shrug off a significant change because it affects them more slowly, but that might be a totally wild an overwhelming experience for a little fish to go through

    • @ziggurat
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      172 hours ago

      The math actually works, and is quite simple. Just assume the fish is a sphere

    • @[email protected]
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      393 hours ago

      something i love about Lemmy is that on the drop of a hat someone is willing to calculate the “surface area to fish ratio”

      • @[email protected]
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        122 hours ago

        Problem is, you almost never know if that’s actually true or complete bullshit.

        It seems plausible, but killing virgins for rain also seemed plausible back then in the 70s.

    • @BanjoShepard
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      424 hours ago

      And in a similar but completely different way, the fish are being added to massive bodies of water. Home aquariums are minute in comparison, so they can’t balance out chemical swings as easily and are much more prone to higher levels of nitrites and other toxic chemicals. The larger the body of water, the more stable the water quality.