Frozen fish!

[Ogertron3000]

Years ago i had a girlfreind who had some goldfish in a bowl, one of them was not well and had been lying on its side gasping for a few weeks, this was the early days of the internet and a search for a painless way to kill a fish said putting it in a bag in the freezer with a small amount of water would send it off to a peaceful sleep never to awake. We did it and after around 5 hours took out an almost solid block of ice with a fish in it, i threw it in the bin and went about my business. Several hours later i threw some takeaway containers in the bin and as soon as i lifted the lid i saw some movement and a splash, the fish had thawed out and survived the ordeal.
I guess this shows the humble goldfish has a pretty good tolerance for cold.

The rest of the story gets worse, the next 2003 google search said strong alcohol would do the job, she filled a cup with vodka and dropped the poor fish in and it went nuts thrashing around, then she found a site that said heat up a large needle on the stove and stick it into its brain. I said no way and dropped a brick on it to end the torment which had been my first suggestion all along. Poor fish, the so called painless death methods just gave it a day of incredible suffering before it was all over.

 

[esoxlucius]

Years ago i had a girlfreind who had some goldfish in a bowl, one of them was not well and had been lying on its side gasping for a few weeks, this was the early days of the internet and a search for a painless way to kill a fish said putting it in a bag in the freezer with a small amount of water would send it off to a peaceful sleep never to awake. We did it and after around 5 hours took out an almost solid block of ice with a fish in it, i threw it in the bin and went about my business. Several hours later i threw some takeaway containers in the bin and as soon as i lifted the lid i saw some movement and a splash, the fish had thawed out and survived the ordeal.
I guess this shows the humble goldfish has a pretty good tolerance for cold.

The rest of the story gets worse, the next 2003 google search said strong alcohol would do the job, she filled a cup with vodka and dropped the poor fish in and it went nuts thrashing around, then she found a site that said heat up a large needle on the stove and stick it into its brain. I said no way and dropped a brick on it to end the torment which had been my first suggestion all along. Poor fish, the so called painless death methods just gave it a day of incredible suffering before it was all over.

Wow, did you and your girlfriend at the time ever contemplate venturing into the film making business? I think horror films would have been right up your street, lol.

 

[Kelly_Aquatics]

Arctic char and burbot would be contenders. Arctic char around Nunavut, and the Hudson Bay spend a lot of time in the ocean, especially during winter. Sea water doesn’t freeze until the water temp hits -21 Celsius because of the salt which lowers the freezing temp. So Arctic char thrive in water temps that arent even possible for freshwater fish.

 

[SilverArowanaBoi]

Years ago i had a girlfreind who had some goldfish in a bowl, one of them was not well and had been lying on its side gasping for a few weeks, this was the early days of the internet and a search for a painless way to kill a fish said putting it in a bag in the freezer with a small amount of water would send it off to a peaceful sleep never to awake. We did it and after around 5 hours took out an almost solid block of ice with a fish in it, i threw it in the bin and went about my business. Several hours later i threw some takeaway containers in the bin and as soon as i lifted the lid i saw some movement and a splash, the fish had thawed out and survived the ordeal.
I guess this shows the humble goldfish has a pretty good tolerance for cold.

The rest of the story gets worse, the next 2003 google search said strong alcohol would do the job, she filled a cup with vodka and dropped the poor fish in and it went nuts thrashing around, then she found a site that said heat up a large needle on the stove and stick it into its brain. I said no way and dropped a brick on it to end the torment which had been my first suggestion all along. Poor fish, the so called painless death methods just gave it a day of incredible suffering before it was all over.

...I'm....just....speechless...Idk who I feel worse for LOL

 

[jjohnwm]

Arctic char and burbot would be contenders. Arctic char around Nunavut, and the Hudson Bay spend a lot of time in the ocean, especially during winter. Sea water doesn’t freeze until the water temp hits -21 Celsius because of the salt which lowers the freezing temp. So Arctic char thrive in water temps that arent even possible for freshwater fish.

Now that's an interesting point I hadn't thought of! But that temperature sounded too extreme, so I had to do some reading. Everything I have found indicates that the absolute coldest temperature that the densest seawater can achieve is only 2 Celsius degrees below freezing. Pure water at sea level freezes at O degrees Celsius...the densest (i.e. highest salinity) seawater freezes at -2 degrees Celsius, and most seawater will freeze slightly higher than that, at around -1.8 degrees Celsius.

So Arctic Char, like other salmonids, is a tough fish when it comes to surviving cold, but not that tough...

Years ago i had a girlfreind who had some goldfish in a bowl, one of them was not well and had been lying on its side gasping for a few weeks, this was the early days of the internet and a search for a painless way to kill a fish said putting it in a bag in the freezer with a small amount of water would send it off to a peaceful sleep never to awake. We did it and after around 5 hours took out an almost solid block of ice with a fish in it, i threw it in the bin and went about my business. Several hours later i threw some takeaway containers in the bin and as soon as i lifted the lid i saw some movement and a splash, the fish had thawed out and survived the ordeal.
I guess this shows the humble goldfish has a pretty good tolerance for cold.

The rest of the story gets worse, the next 2003 google search said strong alcohol would do the job, she filled a cup with vodka and dropped the poor fish in and it went nuts thrashing around, then she found a site that said heat up a large needle on the stove and stick it into its brain. I said no way and dropped a brick on it to end the torment which had been my first suggestion all along. Poor fish, the so called painless death methods just gave it a day of incredible suffering before it was all over.

I've been present for a couple of debacles similar to that; your common-sense approach is what I always preach, but many aquarists are simply too squeamish to practice it. They are totally committed to reducing suffering to zero, but unfortunately it's their own suffering about which they are concerned, and so therefore many fish get tortured to death by means that allow the aquarist to salve his/her own conscience because their hands stay clean.

 

[Kelly_Aquatics]

Now that's an interesting point I hadn't thought of! But that temperature sounded too extreme, so I had to do some reading. Everything I have found indicates that the absolute coldest temperature that the densest seawater can achieve is only 2 Celsius degrees below freezing. Pure water at sea level freezes at O degrees Celsius...the densest (i.e. highest salinity) seawater freezes at -2 degrees Celsius, and most seawater will freeze slightly higher than that, at around -1.8 degrees Celsius.

So Arctic Char, like other salmonids, is a tough fish when it comes to surviving cold, but not that tough...

That makes more sense not sure where I got the number from.

 

[esoxlucius]

jjohnwm . As an angler I was always led to believe that when fishing in winter you had a better chance of catching if you targeted the deepest pockets of water in the pond you were fishing. This is because this is where the warmer water would be.

Apparently this is true. But how??? Warm air rises, cold air sinks. How is the opposite true with water? I saw a clip on you tube where a guy used food colouring to colour warm and cold water and when he placed them together the warm water floated but the cold water layered underneath!!!! What's going on?

 

[jjohnwm]

That unique property of water is what allows life on earth as we know it! Water gets denser and denser as the temp decreases...but then as it approaches freezing, its density decreases slightly. When it freezes, the crystalline structure of ice apparently decreases the density even further. That's why ice floats, and why natural bodies of water freeze over on top, and why the slightly-warmer water sinks down to the bottom.

Think about it. If water behaved like most other substances, the coldest, densest water would be at the bottom and that's where ice would form first. Since the heat is lost at the top of the water, to the much-colder winter air, we would have lakes and rivers start freezing from the bottom up; they would eventually freeze solid all the way, and the deeper water would be frozen year round, with only the uppermost, warmer layers possibly thawing out in summer.

If life managed to evolve on a world like that, it would be pretty different than what we actually have. So, rather than saying "Why does this work like this?" or "How can this be?" ...I prefer just to say "Thank goodness!"

 

[Kelly_Aquatics]

jjohnwm . As an angler I was always led to believe that when fishing in winter you had a better chance of catching if you targeted the deepest pockets of water in the pond you were fishing. This is because this is where the warmer water would be.

Apparently this is true. But how??? Warm air rises, cold air sinks. How is the opposite true with water? I saw a clip on you tube where a guy used food colouring to colour warm and cold water and when he placed them together the warm water floated but the cold water layered underneath!!!! What's going on?

coldwater fish such as lake trout and burbot travel extremely shallow in the winter since the whole water column is cold and they are no longer limited to staying below the thermocline. I target brook trout in 2-3 feet of water in winter. I think the water temperature is more dictated by vegetation and bottom composition during the winter than it is by depth. I have caught perch in 4 feet of water in vegetation at the start of winter but they transition to deeper water as the weeds die off shallow.

 

[Trouser Cough]

When I was a kid growing up in Alaska I met a family that was very active in the local aquarium club. Odd to think how things have changed as I haven't heard of anything like an aquarium club for decades but that's the way it was then.

Their name was Baleau IIRC and I think it was one of the parents that applied for and rec'd a permit from F&G to catch and keep a local fish known to be able to freeze, thaw back out and survive the ordeal. As I recall it was not an attractive fish by my Pineapple Swordtail standards of the time and I couldn't understand why anyone might want to keep one. They had it for several years and thawed it back to life in spring multiple times as I understood it.

There was a debate at the time about the existence of ice worms as well. Never paid much attention to that one.