Alligator Gar - Help Please

There is a gar forum, with lots of stickies.
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?109-Gars-amp-Bowfins

Maybe post there.

You may want to reach out to other zoos/aquariums who have successfully kept this species. The folks at Steinhart Aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences are all very knowledgable and I am sure would be willing to help.

They have a roughly 15,000G tank (probably the bare minimum to keep this species) with 8 to 10 of them.

Aquarium Office (415) 379-5451 aquarium@calacademy.org

Good Luck!

The poster E_americanus in the gar forum is very knowledgeable about gars and is who I would ask my questions to.

Gars typically do Well in any temp but for faster Growth rates you would want to aim for 80F so there metabolism speeds up. I would feed a high protein diet/quality diet consisting variety of sea foods, pellets, and feeders swimming in the tanks (not any carp specie, I'd do tilapia ).
For the snapper right now I currently feed squid , blood worms, and krill and I'm seeing a very fast growth rate (temp is room temp water). I feed some weeks every day or every other day depending on my schedule.


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I would aim for a water temperature in the 22-26 °C range (~72-79 °F). Personally, I would try to provide some seasonal variation in water temperature by maintaining the gars in the upper end of the range that I mentioned during the summer while maintaining them at the lower end of that range during the winter (or even lower than that, if possible). The temperatures that you mentioned are a bit higher than what is preferred, but they will not be a huge issue for the gars should they be exposed to them. It would be preferable to use those higher temperatures to your advantage should one of the gars get sick or injured in order to speed healing & infection times.

With gars that size, you really have two options:

1. Keep them on live foods for life.
2. Keep them on live foods for the time being, but also work on getting them to accept other foods such as pellets until they can be kept on just a pellet-based diet.

You'd be just about at the point where pellet training could start, so that decision is up to you. Regardless of your future feeding plans, the gars should have food available at all times at this size, so plan on stocking tons of feeder fishes in their aquarium in order to give them plenty of prey; the frequency of feedings can be reduced to a couple of times a week once they're a bit bigger.

As for the size of the aquarium, you're limited to somewhat small aquariums when these gars are young as young gars have a tendency to break their backs if kept in too large of an aquarium. Of course then, this tendency is usually only an issue in the glass aquarium setting at home; I highly doubt that it would be an issue in a very large aquarium since the gar would have time to decelerate & avoid the glass. I'm not sure how the sizes translate over into metric, but a standard 75 gallon or 120 gallon aquarium would work very well for growing out young gars of that size if you want to grow them out in an aquarium. They could be kept in a larger grow-out setting provided that the sides of the grow-out are opaque rather than transparent; a plastic/fiberglass stock tank would work very well as a grow-out and would be great for housing the gars until they're large enough to go in the main display.

How many gars did you want to maintain in this display anyway? The final display size is dependent upon the quantity of gars as these fishes can get quite large after all. However, I wouldn't expect the gars to get any larger than 1.5 m or so as gars that are raised from a small size in captivity tend to never reach the large sizes that they sometimes reach in the wild; these smaller sizes are partly due to the genetics of the parents and partly due to stunting due to captivity itself. Also, keep in mind that the area of the aquarium is more important than the volume; a larger footprint is going to be preferred over more depth.

Hope that helps!

Before they renovated Steinhart, they had a tank full of 7'+ gars in a 20,000G+ exhibit...I don't know if they got them that large, or if they grew to that size in the aquarium. I'm not sure what happened to those monsters...The gars they currently have are smaller (between 4' and 6'), but I believe they grew these out from 3', so I would plan the exhibit to be large enough to accommodate them at their full grown size of 7'+. Banking on them to be stunted is probably not the best idea...as there really is no reason that they shouldn't grow to their full potential.

In my opinion, Zoos and public aquariums should be setting the example of how to properly keep and care for animals and not going with the smallest enclosure possible (the bare minimum) in order to merely keep the animal alive. Just my 2 cents.

If I had to guess, the current exhibit (below) is about 25' x 10' x 8'.

Hello!
My fiancee is Danish, I'll have to tell her about your post! We visited Danmark last fall.
Alligator Gars would do well in unheated aquaria, but may grow slower (which is more natural, and more healthy, to begin with.) I agree with what WIGGLES said.

I cannot send you a PM yet, but are you aware of the Botanik Have? There are two plants there that I forgot to write the name of, and if you are close to it, could you help me find the names of those plants?

I have an Alligator Gar, too - he does great in room temperature. As for feeding - I prefer pelletized food - it is cheaper, and healthier (no risk of parasites) than fresh food. It will also reduce the likelihood of their preying upon tankmates, since they won't associate fish so strongly with a feeding.

I feed my gars every 2 or 3 days. I'd love to hear more about your setup!

aldiaz33 said:

Before they renovated Steinhart, they had a tank full of 7'+ gars in a 20,000G+ exhibit...I don't know if they got them that large, or if they grew to that size in the aquarium. I'm not sure what happened to those monsters...The gars they currently have are smaller (between 4' and 6'), but I believe they grew these out from 3', so I would plan the exhibit to be large enough to accommodate them at their full grown size of 7'+. Banking on them to be stunted is probably not the best idea...as there really is no reason that they shouldn't grow to their full potential.

In my opinion, Zoos and public aquariums should be setting the example of how to properly keep and care for animals and not going with the smallest enclosure possible (the bare minimum) in order to merely keep the animal alive. Just my 2 cents.

Click to expand...

The full potential of these fishes is relative at best; genetics play a large part in determining their adult size. I see no reason for them to plan on having these gars reach huge sizes unless the gars are from a population that reaches such sizes (even then captive conditions will probably stunt them); expecting them to only get to be about 1.5 m (~5'), if that, isn't unreasonable rather its just realistic for gars grown out from that size in a captive setting. Heck, the zoo/aquarium near me can't even get their longnose gars to grow past ~0.75 m (2.5') despite the fact that those gars "could" get to be much larger than that. For example, I have two alligator gars & two longnose gars in my nearly 100,000 gallon natives pond, and I certainly don't expect them to reach anything over 1.5-2 m (~5-6.5') because factors beyond my control will not allow them to reach larger sizes.

As for the Steinhart Aquarium gars, I seriously doubt that they grew those gars out from a small size considering that it takes years to get them to that size and even institutions such as this have trouble getting these gars to large sizes; it's much easier for them to just purchase ones that are already at that size or maybe slightly smaller than that.

Now I'm not saying that he should try to give these gars the bare minimum rather I'm saying that he needs to have realistic adult sizes in mind when planning this display. IMO, something on the scale of 6 m x 3 m x 1.5 m (~20' x ~10' x ~5') would be more than big enough for a small group of typical-sized captive alligator gars; he could probably go a little smaller if need be, though, and go with a slightly lesser depth if cost is an issue.

Wiggles, I see that you are in Pennsylvania. How many winters have your alligator gars been through? Does your pond freeze over?

I didn't think they could tolerate a Pennsylvania winter so I'm curious to hear what your experience has been.