trouble with feeding my fl. gar

Hey guys! My gar have both darkened up and settled in. One has a more greenish hue, the other is dark with an iridescent copper base! I can't post pictures right now unfortunately

Quick question: the larger gar (1') was quick to convert front ghost shrimp to freeze dried and frozen krill + vita chem. He is already looking plump, and begs when I pass by the tank. His jumbo carnisticks are in the mail now

The smaller gar (10"), however; is not interested in anything but live. I tricked him into sampling a frozen krill by dropping it perfectly on his head, but he spat it up after chewing. The krill was thawed and had been soaked in a mild garlic solution. He ignores the freeze dried altogether. It has been 6 days since I added ghost shrimp. Previously they were constantly in the tank in prolific numbers. There are a handful of dodgy stragglers left that will prove to be a challenge to catch. My Faranah Lapradei will more than likely be the first to catch them. Should I proceed to starve the gar onto freeze dried and pellets, or cave now and try again next week? I don't want him to get the impression that if he holds out long enough, a live meal will always arrive. Thanks!
III

I have long a distance reacher grabber that freaks him out if he notices it. Tongs wouldn't be much better. He is much more skittish than his larger counterpart. Any live food would be taken no problem-- the issue here is that my 180g community can clean out 350 ghost shrimp in almost no time at all. My Poly's are bottomless pits that hunt 24/7 when prey is in the tank. The gar are good at catching them too, but it isn't a cost effective strategy, and I do not like feeding live food for personal reasons.

cnel124 said:

Ghost shrimp are my gars main diet, sometimes feeder cichlids. It's great because when the ghost shrimp die, the gars just eat the dead ones too

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Yup, they love them. Its awesome to watch them hunting them in a planted tank. You really get a sense of how/why their mouths evolved into such a seemingly peculiar shape.

Mine will stick their mouths in among the leaves of java ferns, forcing the shrimp into the folds of the plant. From there the shrimp have nowhere to go, and a gar's long snout is the perfect tool to thrust down into the leaves and snatch up the shrimp. Theirs is an almost surgical level of precision. The ghost shrimp can't effectively hide once the gar is in close quarters.

Just because you haven't seen it, doesn't mean it isn't happening ;p