Please get your reply in soon as this thread's getting closed after that.
understandable Ryan!
ok will be short and to the point and try to stay on with the OP and of course "the other guy" (karaig19) -
-the OP wanted to know what fish he had, and he has an alligator gar. will it be ok in a 250g pond? for a little while, yes, for the long term, most likely not. the OP was obviously concerned with getting a fish that would grow too large for what he had, and unfortunately ended up with the wrong species. i hope he is able to re-home the gator gar (ALG) and eventually get an actual Florida gar (FLG).
-to address what is (mainly) nonsense coming from karaig19, first off, you really need to get your statements straight (and coherent/understandable too). FLG and ALG definitely do NOT grow the same (you stated they do). when kept under the right conditions a gator gar can grow ~3' in its first year, this is uncommon, but it can happen and has been show in aquaculture operations and i believe some aquarists have pulled it off too. no matter what conditions you are keeping them under, you will not get a captive FLG up to 3' in its first year...i would say that is a definite difference in growth rate. even under more typical circumstances, ALG and FLG have different growth rates.
-i'm really not sure given how much you have waffled between your 24-36-48" FLG statements what you are saying is the max size of a FLG. they definitely get bigger in the wild than what we get in captivity, but the max sizes reported in most references (even fishbase and some field guides) are actually incorrect. the spotted gar (SPG) also has similar discrepancies...for example, i worked with fish from both northern and southern populations, and nothing indicates they will grow much over 3.5-4'...and that would be a GIANT SPG...that's just allowing for some error. fishbase.org, one of the widely accepted scientific fish reference sites, still reports SPG max size as 150cm...which is nearly 5' long. i thought this was ridiculous given the research myself and others had done, and so i went to their references (and this took a couple different old books in the archives of fisheries libraries) and found that the original reference was from anecdotal reports from fishermen in Mexico...in this region of Mexico there are longnose gars (LNG), ALG, and even tropical gars (TPG) as well as potential for SPGs...given it was only anecdotal information (which is what you are using as fact, and really only with a second level of hearsay since you are saying fishermen may have caught big ones or you may have seen them), it is very likely a mis-ID of the fish, as all other information about the species indicates a max size more around 125 cm, and that is with some room for error on the large end).
this can be applied to FLG as most literature has them topping out smaller than SPGs, and although i have seen some big ones in the wild there, and i am sure there are some beasts in hiding, nothing we have hard evidence for says they get up to 4' long or even 52" like some references.
so you find us a clear photo of an FLG that is as big as you say (which you will have to pick from 24-36-48 since you reference all 3 sizes), and maybe we will start taking you seriously.
in captivity, well you can look at the link that Kevin posted and that will discuss that question. captive raised FLG seldom reach 24" in captivity...they are not going to get much bigger than that 9/10 times (and that is just leaving some room for error once again).
hope that helps/clarifies what i was trying to say and likely what others were saying/referring to.
now if you will excuse me, i am going to find a rocket gar, as i have never kept gars before and heard that that was a good species to start with in terms of lepisosteids--
--solomon
PS - guess i didn't stay too short with the response when all was said and done
