how fast do fish swim?

[The-Wolf]

I was bored so I have tried to time my fish swimming past a measured distance

I marked 6" on my tank and timmed, using a stopwatch, how long it took to swim past the marks.

Danio rerio managed 0.2seconds
Danio hikari managed 0.21 seconds
Botia morleti managed 0.19 seconds

my question is how fast is this in mph?

 

[WILDER]

You must of been bored. I suppose it depends on the fish type.

 

[jflowers]

you could answer that by searching on google for the formula . seconds / 6 for inches per sec * inches per mile or somthing like that oh and if using a spreadsheet, dont forget BODMAS. How sad am I?

Jon

 

[superballs5337]

how do you know if the fish were swimming as fast as they can. are you just looking for cruisin speed or top speed or what.

 

[Dwarfs]

Morleti botias alway win the speed cometition

 

[blue_ram]

Lets see...
6 inch = 0.0000947 mile
1 sec = 1/3600 hr., so
.2 sec = 1/18000 hr
.21 sec = 1/17142.86 hr
.19 sec = 1/18947.37 hr

0.0000947 mile/ (1/18000 hr) = 1.7046 miles/hr
0.0000947 mile/ (1/17142.86 hr) = 1.6234 miles/hr
0.0000947 mile/ (1/18947.37 hr) = 1.7943 miles/hr

kinda slow isn't it? I thought these guys are much faster than that. Especially at feeding time.

 

[yhbae]

Well, if you think about it, on a shallow water, I could run faster than most small fishes can (I used to catch them using a net all the time when I see a school of them), so it can't be that fast... And I'm sure they are going flat out seeing this crazy human going after them...

 

[The-Wolf]

how do you know if the fish were swimming as fast as they can. are you just looking for cruisin speed or top speed or what.

I'm looking for a bit of fun.
I'm not a scientist you know

 

[The-Wolf]

Lets see...
6 inch = 0.0000947 mile
1 sec = 1/3600 hr., so
.2 sec = 1/18000 hr
.21 sec = 1/17142.86 hr
.19 sec = 1/18947.37 hr

0.0000947 mile/ (1/18000 hr) = 1.7046 miles/hr
0.0000947 mile/ (1/17142.86 hr) = 1.6234 miles/hr
0.0000947 mile/ (1/18947.37 hr) = 1.7943 miles/hr

kinda slow isn't it? I thought these guys are much faster than that. Especially at feeding time.

I really thought they were faster than that
Just goes to show that perception of speed and
actual speed are two different things.

 

[Logitech]

Don't you use the formula of speed equals distance over time?

 

[Aquascaper]

Just goes to show that perception of speed and
actual speed are two different things.

Try telling that to old people when they're out driving

 

[Bignose]

John J. Videler's book Fish Swimming notes that it is difficult to get a measure of the burst speed or fastest speed since you cannot easily convinve the fish to swim at it absolute fastest -- its not like lining up for a 100m dash.

But, you can estimate the optiimum swimming speed -- the fastest speed that uses the minimum amount of energy. Specifically, when the amount of work the fish has to supply from its muscles per unit distance covered is at a minimum, the fish is swimming at its optimum speed.

The correlation Videler gives, based on data for 17 species ranging in size from 0.012 to 0.6 m is:

u_opt = 0.47 M^0.17

where M is the mass of the fish, and u_opt is the optimum speed in m/s.

So, you can estimate the mass of the fish based on its size, or if you are brave enough you can get out your kitchen scale and try that ... then you know the optimal speed of your fish.