Strange.. Mine just sat at the bottom of the tank gasping and just not moving for atleast 3 hours.. Came back from school and it was fine again
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New Gar noob.
- Thread starter Jesseliu13
- Start date
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Gars do that. All mine sit on the bottom when digesting and don't move much. There pretty lethargic. Nothing to worry about.
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Hey i got two Gars, I feed them shrimp... shrimp are really easy to get from the grocery store, they are pretty cheap, they come already frozen so you can just buy a big bag and thaw out the shrimp as you need them... when i am going to feed my Gars, i will grab a small handful of frozen shrimp and run warm water through my hand and they defrost completely in like 90 seconds, or if im lazy ill drop the shrimp in a cup with some cold water and let it sit for a couple hours.
Because the shrimp are pretty heavily curved, and the Gar's want straight food to swallow easily, i don't feed the shrimp as-is, if its got the shell i pull that off, then i cut it into two pieces, trying to make both pieces kinda straight, I usualy end up with a small straight piece where the shell was, and a thick slightly curved piece, which is the meaty end of the shrimp..... I'll usualy squeeze the big piece so that the muscle tissue tears in my fingers and it flattens....
I bought my Gar both at the same time, and they were the same size, but the one Gar is much more aggressive, much better hunter, and has bigger appetite, so its fairly bigger then the other Gar, as such i often tend to feed the big pieces to the big Gar and the small pieces to the small Gar. Anyways if your trying to figure out a way to get it to feed on the shrimp(or whatever your trying to feed it, I'v fed it strips of fish fillet before) its best to make sure you got the right size of food, grip it on one end then start shaking it at the surface of the water.... Gar are ambush predators alot like pike, so they are naturally attracted to something thrashing at the water surface... one thing though is they can be freaked out by your hand and arm, really it almost looks like the piece of meat is attached so they can be wary to attack it right off, once they learn though its no problem, but the hardest part is the beginning.... other people have mentioned starving your fish, I think that word can mean different things to different people, but I would consider starving being the fish is dieing from lack of food.
It doesn't hurt to not feed it for 3-4 days up to a week, depending on its size, the younger/smaller it is the less time you want to give between feedings i would assume, but as it is right now i often don't feed my gar for a week at a time... although i should be feeding more often in my opinion. But i'v done it enough to know it wont kill them or make them go crazy.
Back to hand feeding, one thing to is if it starts to come up to the water surface, one way you can get abit more interest is to slowly move the food away from it, try and trigger its instinct to follow and attack it, to not let the food get away.... if it stops chasing you can stop moving it away.... likely unless you get lucky it could take a week or so before then eventually learn. I actually just remembered how i did it with one of the Gar i have, before i would feed them feeder fish, like mollies/guppies/swords.... normaly id just drop them all in and let them do their thing... well what i started doing was grabbing the fish by their tails, and holding them at the water's surface for the Gar to come and grab... the fish are thrashing about and draw attention on them quickly, the Gar will come up and strike it and take it away... after you've done that 2-3 times its learned to take food from your hand.... when you substitute it with a piece of fish fillet or shrimp, aslong as you swish it around abit it will hit the shrimp before it relises its not a fish. Once it swallows it and everything is fine, your pretty much set.
I'v had some problems over the months with them being fussy, as i mentioned before I started out feeding them pieces of fish fillet, I found they liked certain types of fish best, and wouldnt touch other types, even after not eating for a week and i know they are really hungry, so I would have to experiment with different types of fish, and when i found one they liked, sometimes out of no where they would stop liking it(although from what i understand, alot of times fish are mislabeled, so maby it wasn't same type), they usualy always liked white fish, i forget the species, but I found with shrimp they would more consistantly eat it, they just won't stuff their stomaches like they will with feeders and some fish fillet iv used before.
Its worth mentioning that hand feeding them, as they get bigger and if they are really hungry they will often overshoot the piece of food and instead bite your finger, I'v been bit 3-4 times, it doesn't hurt alot but it does hurt and their teeth are RAZOR SHARP! and will draw blood, I'v had this problem more as they've gotten bigger, and also as I'v started feeding them after more time... what i'v done is started to use a toothpick to lightly pierce the flesh of the meat and dangle it in the water, that seems to work.
Sorry to go on and on about stuff that probably seems like common sense to some of you, but im just explaining my experience with the subject as I'v been learning almost from scratch since i started and I'm sure someone can benefit even just a little from what I'v learned. Also I got a firebelly cichlid in the tank and the Gar never attack it, I also got two clown loaches, the Gar never bother them either... I had the Gar for weeks before getting the loaches, the first day i tossed them in the Gar grabbed it right off the bat, it was way bigger then it could swallow and it just sat there for awhile before letting it go, and hasnt touched it since, I agree with what other people have said, a Gar will eat any fish in the tank if it thinks it can fit down its throat, but if it relises that it can't it will usualy leave it alone.
I suspect that it might even leave a fish alone even if the Gar grows big enough eventually to swallow that fish, provided the Gar gets used to not being able to eat that fish for a long time, but i could be wrong.
Because the shrimp are pretty heavily curved, and the Gar's want straight food to swallow easily, i don't feed the shrimp as-is, if its got the shell i pull that off, then i cut it into two pieces, trying to make both pieces kinda straight, I usualy end up with a small straight piece where the shell was, and a thick slightly curved piece, which is the meaty end of the shrimp..... I'll usualy squeeze the big piece so that the muscle tissue tears in my fingers and it flattens....
I bought my Gar both at the same time, and they were the same size, but the one Gar is much more aggressive, much better hunter, and has bigger appetite, so its fairly bigger then the other Gar, as such i often tend to feed the big pieces to the big Gar and the small pieces to the small Gar. Anyways if your trying to figure out a way to get it to feed on the shrimp(or whatever your trying to feed it, I'v fed it strips of fish fillet before) its best to make sure you got the right size of food, grip it on one end then start shaking it at the surface of the water.... Gar are ambush predators alot like pike, so they are naturally attracted to something thrashing at the water surface... one thing though is they can be freaked out by your hand and arm, really it almost looks like the piece of meat is attached so they can be wary to attack it right off, once they learn though its no problem, but the hardest part is the beginning.... other people have mentioned starving your fish, I think that word can mean different things to different people, but I would consider starving being the fish is dieing from lack of food.
It doesn't hurt to not feed it for 3-4 days up to a week, depending on its size, the younger/smaller it is the less time you want to give between feedings i would assume, but as it is right now i often don't feed my gar for a week at a time... although i should be feeding more often in my opinion. But i'v done it enough to know it wont kill them or make them go crazy.
Back to hand feeding, one thing to is if it starts to come up to the water surface, one way you can get abit more interest is to slowly move the food away from it, try and trigger its instinct to follow and attack it, to not let the food get away.... if it stops chasing you can stop moving it away.... likely unless you get lucky it could take a week or so before then eventually learn. I actually just remembered how i did it with one of the Gar i have, before i would feed them feeder fish, like mollies/guppies/swords.... normaly id just drop them all in and let them do their thing... well what i started doing was grabbing the fish by their tails, and holding them at the water's surface for the Gar to come and grab... the fish are thrashing about and draw attention on them quickly, the Gar will come up and strike it and take it away... after you've done that 2-3 times its learned to take food from your hand.... when you substitute it with a piece of fish fillet or shrimp, aslong as you swish it around abit it will hit the shrimp before it relises its not a fish. Once it swallows it and everything is fine, your pretty much set.
I'v had some problems over the months with them being fussy, as i mentioned before I started out feeding them pieces of fish fillet, I found they liked certain types of fish best, and wouldnt touch other types, even after not eating for a week and i know they are really hungry, so I would have to experiment with different types of fish, and when i found one they liked, sometimes out of no where they would stop liking it(although from what i understand, alot of times fish are mislabeled, so maby it wasn't same type), they usualy always liked white fish, i forget the species, but I found with shrimp they would more consistantly eat it, they just won't stuff their stomaches like they will with feeders and some fish fillet iv used before.
Its worth mentioning that hand feeding them, as they get bigger and if they are really hungry they will often overshoot the piece of food and instead bite your finger, I'v been bit 3-4 times, it doesn't hurt alot but it does hurt and their teeth are RAZOR SHARP! and will draw blood, I'v had this problem more as they've gotten bigger, and also as I'v started feeding them after more time... what i'v done is started to use a toothpick to lightly pierce the flesh of the meat and dangle it in the water, that seems to work.
Sorry to go on and on about stuff that probably seems like common sense to some of you, but im just explaining my experience with the subject as I'v been learning almost from scratch since i started and I'm sure someone can benefit even just a little from what I'v learned. Also I got a firebelly cichlid in the tank and the Gar never attack it, I also got two clown loaches, the Gar never bother them either... I had the Gar for weeks before getting the loaches, the first day i tossed them in the Gar grabbed it right off the bat, it was way bigger then it could swallow and it just sat there for awhile before letting it go, and hasnt touched it since, I agree with what other people have said, a Gar will eat any fish in the tank if it thinks it can fit down its throat, but if it relises that it can't it will usualy leave it alone.
I suspect that it might even leave a fish alone even if the Gar grows big enough eventually to swallow that fish, provided the Gar gets used to not being able to eat that fish for a long time, but i could be wrong.
Whoa that long. But yes, I know that but I don't think it's good to have a fish eat till stuffed and sit at the bottom. It's like over feeding. But I guess I can make an exception
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Thank you! He's changing colors though.. The food he ends up eating is meant for my cichlids... And the food is extremely high coloration foods :/ so it's losing it's darkness. I'm also feeding a lot of fd shrimp
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Nice Florida gar.
Sitting at the bottom, gasping, is a sign of poor water quality. How is your water?
Gars *DO NOT* normally do that. They do not move much, all the time, but gasping at the bottom is a bad sign in any fish.
You do not want to overfeed, anyway - that's not healthy. Just feed him normally, along with the other fish and you'll be good to go.
He looks great though!
Sitting at the bottom, gasping, is a sign of poor water quality. How is your water?
Gars *DO NOT* normally do that. They do not move much, all the time, but gasping at the bottom is a bad sign in any fish.
You do not want to overfeed, anyway - that's not healthy. Just feed him normally, along with the other fish and you'll be good to go.
He looks great though!
It wasn't really gasping. And my water quality is fine. Nitrates a bit high but I recently put a lot of plants. They should do the job. And that's exactly what I meant.. It over ate itself. Right now it's swimming fine.. Just still doesn't know to turn in my tank. It's getting smart and picky... It prefers certain foods now
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Not to be the buzzkill that mentions tanksize, but dont Florida gars get to a size of atleast 20 inches? I was thinking that a 55 gallon is to small :O
But im no gar expert.
