Gar and tankmates - what has and hasn't worked for you, and why

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CTU2fan

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Mar 12, 2007
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Port Orange, FL
I see a ton of threads here asking about gar with other fish, and I thought we could post experiences trying gar with different tankmates and if it worked or not, and if not why (ie. the gar ate the bala shark, the midas killed the gar etc). I'll start.

Florida gar, pushing 18" - currently housed with a 9" senegal poly, 2 6" severums, 1 10" chocolate cichlid, a 4" JD, 9" channel cat, 7" redtail chalceus. Right now everything is working. In the past I had a large uaru and the bickering between the uaru and choc seemed to really stress out the gar. The cichlids in there currently ignore the gar and vice versa, and there's no fighting between the cichlids to bother the gar. Possible future issues I see are as the channel cat grows or if the JD becomes aggressive, and I know the chalceus is at risk. My gar is very peaceful and has never shown interest in snacking on any tankmates, so I took a calculated gamble adding the chal because it wasn't doing well in the tank it was in.
 
My uncle have an 18in. arrowana and 6 5in blood parrots with a 20in. Alligator gar and it worked they didn't fight.But it may be because the gar was on pellets though.......
 
i have two big castexi rays(15 inch disc),silver arowana(25 inch),gator gar(16 inch),spotted gar(14 inch),long nose gar(24 inch),cuban ga(16 inch),fire eel(24 inch),and two endli(18-20 inch).no problems with anyone so far.The tank is 450 gallons.
 
i have a florida/spotted with a northern pike and 3 green sunfish. working well so far. gar was not working in my sa/ca cichlid pond.
 
the problem here are too many replies from guys who've had a combo that will not work in the long run, but it seems as thou it has on this thread. i'm thinking you also need to add tank dimentions, and not just gallonage, the length of time it worked, and diet of the fish. i'll post mine soon
 
3 gators (biggest one pushing one meter) living with 3 arapaimas, 2 RTCs and 2 oscars in 3x2x0.8m aquarium/pond. With the exception of Os, all others are above 2'. So far so good for more than a year already. Food includes catfish pellets, shirmp, frogs, snakeheads (and other market fish) and crikets (very seldom cos RTC does not like those).

I don't see why this combo will not work in the long term.

After my first gar killed my silver aro, i did not try the silver combo (don't intend either cos RTC has also one silver aro under his belt) ... pacu combo does not seem to work (lost three redbellied pacus now) ... may be try next rainy season. ARTC did not work out,but that was killed by RTC + too much size difference. A shot to show all of them :naughty:

PS: i am a bit hesitant to add marble pims in the future

coomunity.JPG
 
Glad to see the posts re: gator gars as I've always gone on the assumption that gators are only going to work with other gators. Curious to see how the gator combos work as the gator gar grow.

xander13;2357130; said:
the problem here are too many replies from guys who've had a combo that will not work in the long run, but it seems as thou it has on this thread. i'm thinking you also need to add tank dimentions, and not just gallonage, the length of time it worked, and diet of the fish. i'll post mine soon
Click to expand...

Dimensions makes sense, for mine tank is ~170G, dims are 72"x18"x31" (LWH). My fish get no feeders, only various hikari pellets (carnivore, cichlid gold, biogold) with large amounts of f/d krill and earthworms, and occasional market shrimp and cut fish. I think that's a big part of why my particular mix has worked; if my gar was on a feeder diet I expect he'd have eaten or killed the chalceus already, and probably the JD. Though that may not be the whole story as this particular gar was on a 100% feeder diet when I adopted him, and that was only 7 months ago or so.
 
xander13;2357130; said:
the problem here are too many replies from guys who've had a combo that will not work in the long run, but it seems as thou it has on this thread. i'm thinking you also need to add tank dimentions, and not just gallonage, the length of time it worked, and diet of the fish. i'll post mine soon
Click to expand...

excellent points on the duration of time the combos have worked. i like that ctoychik included this in their info.

many combos will work temporarily...and most we are seeing here (with just a couple exceptions) are quite temporary...less than a year, maybe just months. it will be much more beneficial to include the timestamp AND even moreso if longer-duration combos are given more weight. with the exception of cytochik, i don't anticipate any of the gator-gar combos will last for more than a year at best (probably less), and the native fishes combo has already been mentioned to be temporary by the owner (hence, northern pike w/ gar is not an advisable combo).

generally solid combos with gars are multiple gar species of relatively the same size in a 2'-3' wide tank (this is size dependent), gars and bichirs, gars and the peaceful lungfishes (SAL, AUL). African arowanas will also work, sometimes clown/royal knife fishes. these combos have all been maintained before personally for 3+ years, with multi-gar combos at about 6 years.--
--solomon
 
Hello,

Just came across this site looking for more info on my needle nose gar.

I will post pics in a near future.

I have sooo many questions but I will try and read most of the treads first..as I know it can be annoying to answer the same question over and over as I do as a mod on a motorcycle forum.
 
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