I'm gonna throw out some more pics. I'll periodically post pics of this guy. He is still one of my favorite fish! PS: the thing on his snout keeps increasing in size. Here is the only recent pic I have of him. He has hit a growth spurt and I coming up 16". I assume it is that last spurt to the 16-18 inch mark.
update on the gar: The tumor is gone!!!! it just fell off. I guess it is just due to healthy water now that i've had an fx5 running for the last few months. also, the gar has hit that stage where he is slowing down in length growth and mostly putting on the weight. He is on the road to being a monster fish! Still super active and my favorite fish for sure. These pics are still kinda old(around a month +) and some still show the tumor but I assure you it naturally fell off about two weeks ago. I'll try to get more pics today.
my gar also has the tumors you are talking about i think they just get them my friend has the same problem with his gar this happened twice to my gar they eventually fell off but grew back