Pet solutions Florida longnose gar

From the pic it's a Florida. There's a very high chance you will receive a Florida but if not you could sell a true long nose for 3x what you will pay for that one. Either way you win

I thought I would drop in a quick response with a little more information, since I was involved in the conversation on the back side at PetSolutions when you asked that question of one of our customer service reps.

According to the info I have, there is no visual way to tell the difference without dissecting the fish and/or performing genetic testing on small fish like these (10 to 12 inch). There may be some morphological way to tell the difference, but none that I have ever seen listed which is current, and the old "common knowledge" ways of telling the difference are considered factually inaccurate these days. The wholesaler sells these as Florida Longnose, and while the rest of us know there is no such beast and that it is either Florida or Longnose (spotted)...these are Asian imports and as far as the wholesaler is concerned, they are Florida Longnose.

This topic of not being able to tell the difference, and that there is no visible physical difference between the two when they are young is a topic which has been covered extensively here on the forums by other members in the past in other threads. The result of all of those conversations, as far as I can tell, have been inconclusive but have corrected the common myths of you can tell by the spots on the fish, or the girth, or the measurement of the snout, or distance between two points etc. The general frame of thought is location the fish were collected is your best bet for determining which one you have, and the Asian imports this doesn't apply to unfortunately since they can be either one or even a hybrid. General consensus seems to be that out of Asia the gars are most likely Florida Gars unless they have hybridized. I can tell you they won't be a needle nose or a gator.

Inventory at the moment shows us down to 1 of these right now, and it is committed to an order already. We get the fish from the same seller each time though, so the above will always hold true unless someone can provide me with a way which is 100% accurate on determining whether the fish is one, the other, or a hybrid while it is still alive and without genetic lab testing.

I hope this info helps!

A couple of thread examples on the topic from these forums:
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/f...he-difference-between-florida-and-spotted-gar
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/f...9inches-23-5cm)&highlight=spotted+gar+florida

While you are correct about Florida vs. spotted, longnose are a different species and pretty easy to tell apart from FL/spotted at that size. The picture is not of a longnose.

I had a very similar conversation with them about their gar. They were extremely helpful and honest with me on not knowing which gars they had at that small of a size but its a chance you take when the people the online stores buy from send them a mix of species...at no fault of the online stores of course.

if you have an LFS around you I would ask if they can order gar in for you. Its much easier that way...

Well rest assured with the knowledge that you more than likely will never received a gator gar from them haha.