You have a difficult case here.. ideally what you would want to do is separate the fish so it is by it self or just with the Florida gar. It is stressed and at a lowered level of condition. Reduce the stress and it may begin feeding better. At this size it is dangerous for any gar to have reduced it self this much and sadly it is hard to pull them out once they get this far. It can be done but it will require you removing the fish to calm conditions and then try to get it to feed much more. I'd suggest you try thawed frozen silversides or any other whole body fish rather than shrimp. Try to feed the fish directly.. Get some skewers and stake the food on it and present it directly to the fish. If the fish takes food well like this do not over feed it. Just give it a most 2 silversides every two days. If you try and feed it too much right now it will just make things worse. You want to slowly ramp up the feedings until you see the fish clearly getting into better condition. Live rosy or fathead minnows may spark him up or maybe not but you may want to try. Again though even with the live food only add a few and not a whole lot.
Gar mouth
- Thread starter scabbedwings616
- Start date
Why can't they be with other gars? It even in a grow out with other fish of equal aggression?
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Would cod fish work cut up for him to eat? And would you suggest me putting the hybrid, and Lima in the 56 with my other bigger gars and Oscar and clown knife?
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Other gars are the only tank occupants other than food that should be in with a young gar.. Young gars are not aggressive fish.. They are anything but aggressive really.
That comes later on when the Gator is about 18 inches and then a healthy one will become a pain and just kill everything it feels like doing so. It is not really aggression though.. It is just the Gator gar brain. If they think something should be in their mouth that is what will eventually happen. Sometimes this is right away, sometime it takes years.. but it will sooner or later happen. It is the nature of this fish..
You need whole body fish.. That means Scales, backbone, entrails etc.. Just fillet meat will not do as your missing to much of the nutrition needed by these fish at the age it is at. Your local pet shop should have frozen silversides you can also look around good asian markets and find small whole body fish.
I can not guarantee much about the rest of the fish in your setup or if moving this or that will work or not. Many are really not very compatible and not easy to house the way you have them. If you want your gator gar to survive though just follow what I'm suggesting.
Your recommendation would be to move the Lima and the tiger Shovelnose hybrid to another tank and see how he acts by himself? My other tank is a breeder with Mollie's and platty and guppys!!!
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So I moved the gator gar into my breeding tank and to spark him to eat some of the babies or some of the fish. He looks better and is happier in there so far!
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I personally think that gator of yours should be kept alone in that condition because he might be kinda weak to compete with a stronger gar at the moment. Let him get back strong before putting him with other gar.
if you have smaller fish that are breeding too much like guppies and mollies, you can feed him those( just don't feed him the sick fish that might die). See if there any place near you that sell live bait fish for fishing and you can get live minnow there too. I go to the Cabela's near me(not that close tho) to get minnow for my gars once in a while knowing that they do treat there bait when they are coming in with Methylene green(and something else I can't remember) because they do feed those to their display fish tanks too.
if you have smaller fish that are breeding too much like guppies and mollies, you can feed him those( just don't feed him the sick fish that might die). See if there any place near you that sell live bait fish for fishing and you can get live minnow there too. I go to the Cabela's near me(not that close tho) to get minnow for my gars once in a while knowing that they do treat there bait when they are coming in with Methylene green(and something else I can't remember) because they do feed those to their display fish tanks too.
I will minnows for him tomorrow!! See if he goes for them
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So I put him in with about 6 minnows and he has been snapping at them but not catching them. I even went out and got silverside fish and put it on a skewer for him and nothing. Won't even snap at the silver side. What would be the next step?
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