I recently picked up maybe a week ago an 8 inch florida gar that was a return. So I got a 400 gallon tank he would be perfect in so I picked him up, owner said he was eating shrimp/blood worm cubes.. and it's dam near impossible for this guy to show a lick of intrest in food. So frustrating. Is he still getting use too the tank?
Why are gars painful to feed!
- Thread starter Nyrkorey
- Start date
If the Florida gar is healthy I wouldn't worry about it. Also learned from a member here drop food on it's snout. That should trigger the gar to eat.
Yeah ill give it another shot. I been trying tongs, but he's been a little shy. He definitely healthy, swimming around, hanging at the top doing his gar things lol
I recently bought a florida gar too, about two weeks ago. He was stuck on live feeders and wouldn't eat anything for about a week. Mine was 6 inches but is now gobbling down food. Here some tips and tricks which i used, and would recommend.
1. Keep your tank lights off for the first few weeks to help the gar adjust to its new environment
2. Don't make sudden movements around the tank since young gars are very skittish and can break their backs
3. Soak some dry krills in water for a few minutes and put them in the tank where there is high to medium flow. The gars will think of the moving krills like live fish and eat it, like mine did . (Note you can also do did method with other floating food)
4. DO NOT OVERFEED. Remove any uneaten food after 10 minutes of putting it in the tank. Gars are slow fish and take some time to catch and eat floating, moving foods. If you left uneaten foods, you can have high nitrate levels which can cause other problems. The larger the tank, the more food you will have to put for the gar to find and catch it.
5. Don't force you gar to eat foods, give it some time to feel relaxed and safe.
6. I would suggest removing any other fish that are bullying it or/and hogging all the food.
7. lastly, gars can go long periods without food and your one is larger, so i wouldn't worry. And please don't put any live feeder fish since they can carry diseases, parasites , etc and it can become difficult to prevent the gars from eating feeders in the future.
1. Keep your tank lights off for the first few weeks to help the gar adjust to its new environment
2. Don't make sudden movements around the tank since young gars are very skittish and can break their backs
3. Soak some dry krills in water for a few minutes and put them in the tank where there is high to medium flow. The gars will think of the moving krills like live fish and eat it, like mine did . (Note you can also do did method with other floating food)
4. DO NOT OVERFEED. Remove any uneaten food after 10 minutes of putting it in the tank. Gars are slow fish and take some time to catch and eat floating, moving foods. If you left uneaten foods, you can have high nitrate levels which can cause other problems. The larger the tank, the more food you will have to put for the gar to find and catch it.
5. Don't force you gar to eat foods, give it some time to feel relaxed and safe.
6. I would suggest removing any other fish that are bullying it or/and hogging all the food.
7. lastly, gars can go long periods without food and your one is larger, so i wouldn't worry. And please don't put any live feeder fish since they can carry diseases, parasites , etc and it can become difficult to prevent the gars from eating feeders in the future.
8 inch is small but still a fairly decent size, should be able to last a few weeks without food. Don’t worry it is just acclimatising to the tank. I’ve had gars go for weeks without food. Previously had a 13” florida gar go 1.5 months without food. If worst case scenario I would throw in a few feeders.
don’t feed bloodworms, too small for your gar and the leftovers would just float away and rot in your tank resulting in buildup of ammonia and nitrate. Even if it catches some of the bloodworm cube some of the bloodworms would just fall from its mouth. Provides little to no nutritional value as well. I would go for frozen seafoods such as tilapia or market prawns.
Best way to feed a gar in any circumstance is to literally drop it in front of its snout/ face when it is at the surface. Its reflex would be to just grab the food when the water splashes, I could drop a rock in front of it and it would still grab it. Gars like still to slow moving water, if you have high flow it can be another reason why it is stressed out. I would feed it in an area that the water movement is low.
He started trying to eat my northfin floating pellets I feed my silver aro, but he chomps on them for a few chews and spits it out. This is going well over here lol and ive tried dropping shrimp on his face and he just turns away bc the shrimp doesnt float ao then I gotta fish it out... UGH
Disregard we did it!!! Haha dropped cut up shrimp and let it sink too the bottom and he found it and ate two whole shrimp at the bottom.. is there anything better then seeing a fish eat that you been fighting lol