Help! my gar will not eat

[bigrich545]

well thanks for someone seeing my point, i did have to feed it or watch it die, the whole front of him to his midpoint of his body was as skinny as his head and everything behinmd his middle was the same size as it is now, he looked reaally bad, and thats why i force feeded him, but today were moving him into a 300 gallon tub and putting in some feeders and leaving it dark for him and we will see (fingers crossed) thanks
tracy

 

[Lepisosteus platyrhincus]

just be patient
both gars look great.
look dont force feed him. i understand you are afreaid of him dieing but that is stressful as crap. seperate both gars away from the rest of those fish. they are defenatly out proforming him for food. relaxe man. seperate and give him a bunch of food. just the gars and what ever food they will take. by the way love the dark stripe on the other longnose. very odd

 

[bigrich545]

ok people , heres what i did.
i siphoned 150 gallons of water out of the 300 gallon tank into the tub, its a black rubbermaid 300 gallon tub, i reached in and grabbed the gar and placed him into the tub with the same water i got him from, then filled the tub so it was like a half tank water change, i used prime to dechlorinate, then hooked up a canister filter that has been running on another tank for a long time, so it was charged with bacteria and put in a heater to keep it at 79 degrees like tha tank he came from, then i bought some feeders, 1" - 1-1/2" normal goldfish feeders,
now he still showed no interest in them, i left him alone for another day,no lights,

so then the next evening what i did was take a aligator clip and mounted it onto a silver extending antenae like the ones that rabbit ears from a tv have, and i held a goldfish by its tail , and held it underwater by the gars mouth, well he kept swimming away from it, showed no interest,
so i left him be,
well this morning i tried the same thing, he kept moving away from the fish, so i started to tap him on the side of his mouth with the goldfish and WHAM HE HIT IT LIKE HE WAS TRYING TO TELL IT TO MOVE AWAY, but he had it in his mouth for about 20 seconds and then started to eat it,
WAALLLAAAA

 

[bigrich545]

HE STARTED TO EAT THE GOLDFISH, IT WAS A FANTASTIC SITE TO SEE HIM EAT ON HIS OWN, so now i see him going after others on his own, im going to just leave him in there for a while untill he is good and strong and healthy before i move him again,
thanks for all your help, together we saved another fish
tracy

 

[SOKO]

Yeh, don't force feed him. Now that he is by himself, handfeed him. Grab a goldfish that you have swimming around with him and put it right in front of him. The gar should jump on it. Do it repeatedly until it can't eat anymore.

It's much better than force feeding him.

 

[Lepisosteus platyrhincus]

good job. now just feed him on his own

 

[bigrich545]

yea , i will , but remember he was soooooooooooo skinny that he was going to die, it was a matter of time, i mean if i didnt force feed him, he was going to die, so it all worked out, the next step is to get him onto market shrimp, and that wont come untill hes very healthy and then i starve him and try to get him onto shrimp, but thats at lweast anther month or 2 away
thanks guys
tracy

 

[bigrich545]

?

 

[Polypterus]

This may be a simple question but.....

You do know that Longnosed gar are always skinny looking fish right? They are not thick in general and their body size at the size of that fish should be roughly the Diameter of the head at the Operculum...

I'm asking because I'm not quite sure you know and may be taking other species or pics of large Adult specimens as examples. Gars can go incredibly long periods of time without feeding and it does not really phase them in the least. You should never have a reason to force feed one and it is a really bad thing to do so. I'm acually surprised that by doing this you have not just killed the fish. It would be very easy to just shove something right into their air bladder to block it and suffocate the fish as the food rots. I'm not sure you understand these fish or their anatomy this could have easily been done and you can easily kill the fish when doing this. Not to mention the stress placed on the poor thing by being hauled out of water (Very un-natural) and have crap shoved down its throat with a pencil.

This is an incredibly bad idea and it should not be done.

Changing the fishes conditions as you have done NOW is the correct approach.. Force feeding is never a good option and even if you think it was IT IS NOT. This is not good for the fish at all and was a gamble at best.

This is a terrible example of what to do with a non-feeding gar

 

[xander]

dudette...beautiful gar, wth was with the force feeding. why didn't you post here before attempting it? you would have been told right away that it was merely stressed and given time would take to eating. anyways good luck with it and beautiful fish