Juvenile Lepisosteus ID

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Polypterus

Fire Eel
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Aug 17, 2005
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Juvenile gar ID is quite a difficult task but not as difficult as many make it out to be. There seems to be an overwhelming number of posts just getting this wrong so here I'll present the four species of Lepisosteus in a very clear manner.

The following Pics are representative examples of all four Lepisosteus.
Oculatus and Platyrhinchus have been combined and a typical hobby fish is represented.

Some variation exists in all of these but those presented are what 80% will encounter..

Please use this resource when posting so us that do work with these fish can best help you with the animal in question..

Edit: Last pic is a 9cm Shortnosed and is copyrighted do not use without permission...

IMG_0222.jpg

LO-001-DR-1.jpg
 
P

Polypterus

Fire Eel
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OK well never mind.. I can see some of this being useful as is but I do not have the permissions or time to detail each post... It is sort of useless trying here at the moment...This will take too much detailed editing and adding of material to work with on a forum structure without specific permissions..

Hell at least I tried...
 
headbanger_jib

headbanger_jib

Doomsday Device
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thats quite nice but only if you had given the common names to them
that would have helped any one getting into the hobby new
nice try btw poly
 
P

Polypterus

Fire Eel
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Common names? whats the point? Half of these fish are called Alligator gar and the other half made up names like Longnosed Florida spotted, Shortnosed gator Florida. Alligator longnosed or Marble gar or Gar cichlid.Ad naseum.

Common names are useless...Really with these fish understanding which animal your talking about requires knowing the scientific name and using this..
 
demjor19

demjor19

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Dec 17, 2006
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Polypterus;1763192; said:
Common names? whats the point? Half of these fish are called Alligator gar and the other half made up names like Longnosed Florida spotted, Shortnosed gator Florida. Alligator longnosed or Marble gar or Gar cichlid.Ad naseum.

Common names are useless...Really with these fish understanding which animal your talking about requires knowing the scientific name and using this..
Click to expand...
i agree...common names are asinine. they always seem to be misleading or just plain wrong in the hobby especially.

nice thread too richard...information like this has been long overdue. maybe restart the thread from scratch (so you can organize it how you want it) and have it pinned?
 
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CTU2fan

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Mar 12, 2007
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I like the thread as-is re: the names...it's 4 species, not that hard to use the scientific names. Not to mention when you go to the LFS and see that "spotted Florida alligator gar" you're ready to scrap the common names anyway (and then you look closer and said "gar" has an adipose fin).

But names aside...looking at the pics of these baby gars I can see the difference, and if I saw babies at the LFS after seeing the pics I could likely peg the FL/Sp, LN, and SN and that's really all that matters (except that my LFS only ever has the occasional adult FL/Sp so I'll never get to play the ID game).
 
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