Shortnose Gar - Lepisosteus platostomus
- Thread starter Madding
- Start date
Well say what you gotta say. I know my fish better as it was me who observed the the growth rate. Try feeding your gars cut up weather loaches and you'll see the difference. When the fish arrived here in Canada, I measured them but unfortunately didn't took any pics. I was expecting some 5"+, but the biggest that arrived was 4.5".E_americanus;4100458; said:i'm not saying it isn't impressive growth, i'm just saying your claim isn't as accurate as you say it is. so now TFD (who also isn't very good at size estimates, trust me) says 4-5", as opposed to your initial 4-4.5"? on top of that, you can't estimate much with your camera if it's such and such a distance from the tank, the fish is in the water behind glass, so on and so forth.
trust me, i track growth of fishes (particularly gars) essentially for a living. they can have tremendous growth when powerfed, i'm just saying even being off by an inch (or more) is an inaccurate claim when it comes to growth. unless you had them out of the water on a measuring board, your statements are mere estimates.
nice job on growing out the fish, but 9" isn't the total growth in that time period we're looking at here.
obviously, since this isn't an aquatics journal and it's a fish forum, even growth claims that are a bit off aren't the end of the world--
--solomon
Here's what I did. Temp at 84-86F
Water change every 5 days
Tank size is 55g.
Food feed 4-5x a day mainly hikari floating sticks
Types of food being offer:
-Cut up weather loaches
-Cut up prawn
-Cut up smelt
-Cut up tilapia fillet
-Hikari aro sticks.
I have bichirs and snakeheads grown incredibly fast with weather loaches too.
Different hobbyist just have different ways of growing up their fish.
They just changed it probably a moment ago and added the florida gar at top of it too. Before it was list below the bowfins, shortnose gars at 4-5".E_americanus;4100463; said:PS - i don't know if your link changed or what, but the TFD link says 5-6"
BTW it was also you who posted a tread in AP who grew a gar in 21 days from 3"-10" by power feeding. I just read those tread and did it myself expect added other types of foods. I did my in 26 days from 4"-4.5" to 12"-13". It was actually a record for me.
I'd prefer to see detailed records rather than anecdotal hearsay. And I do feed Weather loach also.. Pick them up at a local Asian shop along with Horsehead loach Snakehead, various gouramy Cyprinids and the like. Never saw any particular growth boom because of it.
Never saw that extreme of a growth boom in shorts and I may have been feeding them more often. (I have seen this in Gators and to a lesser extent Longnosed) I've grown out a lot of them under similar conditions and diet (Except I do water changes more often) and have never seen anything like that. Shorts do grow very quickly but I've never seen them reach that size that fast.
Not discounting what your saying, but what you are saying is in contrary to a good amount of data that I have so it needs questioning and clarification.
Never saw that extreme of a growth boom in shorts and I may have been feeding them more often. (I have seen this in Gators and to a lesser extent Longnosed) I've grown out a lot of them under similar conditions and diet (Except I do water changes more often) and have never seen anything like that. Shorts do grow very quickly but I've never seen them reach that size that fast.
Not discounting what your saying, but what you are saying is in contrary to a good amount of data that I have so it needs questioning and clarification.
I don't really need to give you much detailed record as I didn't expect them myself to grow them these quick. Unless you ship me a 4" shortnose gar and I'll record the detail daily till they get up to 12-13 inches in a month. It because you took care of many shortnose gars and have the same growth rate as you expect, it's because you took care of them the same way. Different hobbyist have different way of taking care of fish and that also effects the growth rate. Some will grow slow or faster than others. It will depend on how you take care of individual.Perun;4102168; said:
Sorry Madding for stealing your tread. I just hate being proven wrong when I'm the one who got the fish. Lol!
true on my post...and that was a longnose...where growth like that has been recorded before...and of course there is the gator gar. also note that this was about 6 or 7 years ago, so documenting it with photos wasn't as feasible.King-eL;4100984; said:
all that being said, no one was necessarily proving you wrong here, and you don't necessarily have irrefutable evidence that you are exactly right. that's the problem with tracking fishes in the hobby vs research...one can seldom accomplish both.
now the actual useful information from shortnose growth would be at optimal wild temperature, unlimited ration, YOY. perhaps that can be your next undertaking
----solomon
I'm actually doing a group order of gars and shortnose gars will be included in the order. If some of the 4" are available I will surely record it this time for prof evidence. I just can't stay relax when people are doubting me. Lol!E_americanus;4103169; said:true on my post...and that was a longnose...where growth like that has been recorded before...and of course there is the gator gar. also note that this was about 6 or 7 years ago, so documenting it with photos wasn't as feasible.
all that being said, no one was necessarily proving you wrong here, and you don't necessarily have irrefutable evidence that you are exactly right. that's the problem with tracking fishes in the hobby vs research...one can seldom accomplish both.
now the actual useful information from shortnose growth would be at optimal wild temperature, unlimited ration, YOY. perhaps that can be your next undertaking
--solomon
BTW got a question. Are some of the shornose gars have patterns very similar to a florida or almost similar? Got 3 in the batch that are 12" and just recently showed this patterns. Definitely not a florida gar as the base color is brownish tan especially on the back and when they are juvenile they look very different from juvenile florida that I've seen. Snout is also not as wide as the florida gar. Other are just with few spots that I've seen pics of shortnose gars online.
Here are the pics.
some shortnoses can definitely look similar to FL gars, check out the gar keys on AP and look at the juvenile pics of some of the shortnoses...i had one many many years ago that looked a lot like a FL but later developed the usual shortnose pattern.
with some of those you may have to wait and see how they develop further, but the last photo looks a lot like a regular FL to me, the others are questionable...however FL gars can easily have a brown base color as they are highly variable. the fact they were mixed in with FL & shortnose gars would suggest that those that look like FL gars are likely FL gars.
if you can post a few more pics we may be able to say something more definitive; at the very least, time will tell--
--solomon
with some of those you may have to wait and see how they develop further, but the last photo looks a lot like a regular FL to me, the others are questionable...however FL gars can easily have a brown base color as they are highly variable. the fact they were mixed in with FL & shortnose gars would suggest that those that look like FL gars are likely FL gars.
if you can post a few more pics we may be able to say something more definitive; at the very least, time will tell--
--solomon
Here are some more pics. Can't do a better pics as the snakehead are always in the way.E_americanus;4103326; said:
