going to smack my head against the wall...

[MonsterMinis]

If it's not one thing It's another... the florida has healed up very well.. now both my floridas fins ar getting bit up... they aren't shredded but I'm worried that may be next. the cuban on the other hand has immacutale fins ( btw Sol he's catching up to my smaller florida already!) I have noticed some displays by the two floridas towards eachother.. mostly nose to belly and just following eachother very closely. oddly enough the majority of it is from my smaller florida. I have not witnessed any actually biteing/nipping/aggression. Just the gental nudgeing/touching... which isn't persistant and usually stops after a few seconds, but has been consistent since GAR has been feeling like his/her old self.

A) Is it likely the 2 floridas are scuffleing when I'm not watching?
B) Is it likely the cuban when I'm not watching? ( who has shown no inclination towards aggression and avoids the floridas when they do their lil' "dance")

oddly enough they where all fine before the incident that left my one guy at the bottom for a week. But now there is some def fin damage on both the floridas. nothing major but both have frayed fins. no signs of bacterial infection ect ( eyed them up closely for fin-rot first time I noticed it, day 2 now of no signs of infection ect)

I will be away next week and have someone who's popping in to check on the fish.. but they aren't a fish person. I'm concerned the aggression may escilate while I'm gone.

 

[E_americanus]

hey Amy,

i think it could very well be the CBG...they tend to be pretty variably aggressive as they grow up, but they tend to be more aggressive than other gar species in general (save ALG). it may be on the smaller side compared to your FLGs, but i would imagine its attitude is more aggressive or getting there...regardless of whether you see it in person or not.

i have 15 in the same tank, group 1 and several group 2 individuals...they are very aggressive with feeding and they tend to get nippy with each other (particularly smaller ones) - i have been able to control most of this with food. the other groups do much better but are not as crowded in terms of size of fish:space.

i would just encourage increased feeding to the gars in general...you may still have to deal with further aggression with the CBG as it gets bigger, but that is a part of keeping that species, or multi-species gar tanks in general. the fins will always heal up and there's usually not major damage provided the fish are all about the same size.

keep us posted, and hope that info helps a bit--
--solomon

 

[MonsterMinis]

Thanks Sol, I was hopeing that wasn't the issue. ATM they get live feeders every other week or so. I usually toss 50-60 in and that lasts about 3 days... then I also add a hand-full of NLS pellets everynight during the week ( they fast sat/sun usually) which I see the CBG eat most if not all. sometimes in the am I have to net a few extra pellets out. I was thinking of adding 50 feeders before we left and having the sitter add another 50 mid-week so hopefully there would be at least a few in there at min while we're gone. any other suggestions feeding wise? other then keeping feeders in there 24/7 365 not sure how I can be feeding them more without having rotting food in the tank.

any advise from anyone else mixing these two species would also be much appreciated.

we're also moveing in august (ugh) but the up-side is we'll have access to a full unfinished basement. looking at getting a livestock trough so they won't all be so crammed together as well. plans change alot when you're planning for your first kid.

 

[E_americanus]

how big is the tank again? also, adding some vegetation for cover could help compensate for any space issues. really i wouldn't worry about feeding 24/7 with gars of that size...i have fasted mine at that size for 2-3 days before (sometimes longer in the past depending on circumstances) and although there is some fin-nipping there aren't any casualties.

again, fin nipping is an unfortunately common consequence of keeping multiple gars together and/or multiple gar species together. even in a huge tank it could happen, and even with plenty of feed...it happens in the wild with nearly "unlimited" space, so it sure as heck is likely to happen in captivity. the days where all the fins are perfect in my gar tanks are easily less than 25-33% of the year.--
--solomon

 

[MonsterMinis]

atm they're in a 75 the floridas now are ready for the upgrade. I do have a peice of driftwood that sits at the botton they can "chill behind" and some floating stuff that I forgot the name of but it loosely clumps near the surface. been trying to get my hands on a wider tank since Dec but other then buying new I haven't seen much. and most of it's been way over-priced.

the fins on an aestetic view don't bother me, just had issues in the past with other fish and sudden intense aggression. more worried it's a pre-cursor to worse things to come. But I'll chill abit and just see what they do.

 

[Madding]

In my big gar community the cuban gar has a liking for FLG tail fin every so often. Just frays, nothing serious, and only during feeding time when the CBG gets pretty aggressive.

I also agree with Solomon that my gars fins (tails mostly) are very rarely at 100% all at once. Sticking a bunch of toothy monsters together is bound to yield some biting/fraying. What I notice more is two gars getting "snout locked" when two gars go for food, one clamps down on the others snout and they wrestle around for a while before separating.

 

[MonsterMinis]

Good to know what to expect in the future. though the idea of them jaw locking scares the crap outta me.. lol. I'm always gonna be worried someone will get hurt.

 

[screaminleeman]

Good to know what to expect in the future. though the idea of them jaw locking scares the crap outta me.. lol. I'm always gonna be worried someone will get hurt.

I lost one of my florida gars last week due to a broken snout from wrestling. In a way I am grateful though. It was not growing at the rate of the other two. It was the only one (gar of any type) that I have NOT been able to get off live. That is the ONLY reason that I am feeding live feeders to my gars. To make it worse it was by far the laziest piece of work I have ever seen. It would rarely make the effort to catch its own live when feeders were supplied. It simply would wait for one of the other two (that also ate pellet, Shrimp & market fillet) to catch one and go and steal it from them.

It caught up with him/ her. Not eating non-live made it grow slower than the other two. I witnessed the incident that lead to the lazy gars demise. It as usual stole a minnow from one of the other two gars, and the gar that lost the minnow turned and bit the snout about in the middle. The minnow was in the front end of the snout leaving the mouth wide open. The top jaw snapped on the smaller thief gar. It survived less than 24 hours.

 

[E_americanus]

In my big gar community the cuban gar has a liking for FLG tail fin every so often. Just frays, nothing serious, and only during feeding time when the CBG gets pretty aggressive.

I also agree with Solomon that my gars fins (tails mostly) are very rarely at 100% all at once. Sticking a bunch of toothy monsters together is bound to yield some biting/fraying. What I notice more is two gars getting "snout locked" when two gars go for food, one clamps down on the others snout and they wrestle around for a while before separating.

although the snout-locking can definitely happen, i wouldn't be overly concerned about it...in my big gar tank of many years i have never had a gar die (knock on wood) from a snout lock battle, nor have i had it happen for more than a split second on a few very rare occasions in that tank over the past nearly 7 years. keep the fish well fed and stocking density at a good level and you will be ok...but again, keeping a lot of gars together opens you up to any of these things happening.

in my holding tank with the 15 larger CBGs snout locking is still very rare even though they are quite aggressive when feeding, and in over a 10 years i have not lost a fish to this sort of damage. others' comments are proof that it definitely CAN happen, but i am just saying it's pretty rare (or statistically i would have run into it more often). 2 FLGs and a CBG should do just fine long term, and keep in mind that transitioning further away from live food also helps squash aggression quite a bit - i think that is one of the key things that will help in your situation--
--solomon

Good to know what to expect in the future. though the idea of them jaw locking scares the crap outta me.. lol. I'm always gonna be worried someone will get hurt.

 

[Madding]

Oh for sure, I was just giving her something else to look forward to seeing... I've never even seen one of my gars injured from snout locking (stronger scales than teeth apparently) and like you said it lasts for all of a second or two. The gars themselves seem more puzzled then anything and try their best to let go ASAP.