Am I doing something wrong with my gar????
- Thread starter vaipulu
- Start date
The color change is not unusual. I have caught beautiful green even green and yellow gar in the everglades. Thinking I had something crazy great to show everyone on here I put them in a friends tank untill time for me to go home, and in a few days in the clear water of his tank they went back to black and silver.
Update* Ok Let me start out by saying that Im a United States Marine and I work some insane hours. I do my best to take care of my gar, at least an hour a day. However I think I have made a few mistakes here and now I have some questions. Sometimes I am only home for a few hours, and there are some days I can't come home at all. So... after a few days of quarantine I dump a whole bunch of minnows for them to much up. Well now my gar look like fat hot-dogs. I don't think this is healthy... but at the same time, starving them to bring down weight seems cruel. Can gar get to fat? Any opinions would be most appreciated. Oh hey, they aren't all bundled up in corner anymore and have started "exploring" and what is the deal with my fish being 3 different sizes, they came from the same nest and I got them at the same time... They were also the same size when I first got them. I love you MFKers.
I'm not sure if it's bad to feed them a ton... but I've seen pictures of some extremely thick gar and well, there's only one way they got that way. I feed my gar till they can support themselves on their stomachs.
But mine are also bigger, 10" and 12"
But mine are also bigger, 10" and 12"
not a whole lot of time to get into great detail right now, but here's a couple bullet points:
- if all your gars are roughly the same size as the one you have pictured, you are fine with feeding them the way you are...especially with your described schedule.
often in raising YOY (young of the year) gar, i will start them off with feeder minnows and just dump a bunch into the tank and let them pick them off on their own until they are gone.
-YOY fish need to eat frequently and a decent amount, and their growth rate and behavior reflects this, even in captivity. you won't really deal with any detriment to "overfeeding" the gars at this stage. once they get to 10" or so i would scale back and try switching them to non-live such as frozen, etc (you can better control feeding that way too).
-even though all these gars are from the same cohort, genetics and behavior will cause differences in size. one will likely dominate the other, but as long as they are all growing and one doesn't get so big it can eat the others you should be ok.
-in dumping in a lot of minnows, just be sure you aren't getting a mass die-off which can cause ammonia spikes and cause problems for the gars and the biofilter...as long as they are all being eaten you should be ok with this system for a couple months.
keep us posted and let us know if you have further questions--
--solomon
PS-- in feeding like this, be sure to keep up with water changes! 50% each week is a good start--
- if all your gars are roughly the same size as the one you have pictured, you are fine with feeding them the way you are...especially with your described schedule.
often in raising YOY (young of the year) gar, i will start them off with feeder minnows and just dump a bunch into the tank and let them pick them off on their own until they are gone.
-YOY fish need to eat frequently and a decent amount, and their growth rate and behavior reflects this, even in captivity. you won't really deal with any detriment to "overfeeding" the gars at this stage. once they get to 10" or so i would scale back and try switching them to non-live such as frozen, etc (you can better control feeding that way too).
-even though all these gars are from the same cohort, genetics and behavior will cause differences in size. one will likely dominate the other, but as long as they are all growing and one doesn't get so big it can eat the others you should be ok.
-in dumping in a lot of minnows, just be sure you aren't getting a mass die-off which can cause ammonia spikes and cause problems for the gars and the biofilter...as long as they are all being eaten you should be ok with this system for a couple months.
keep us posted and let us know if you have further questions--
--solomon
PS-- in feeding like this, be sure to keep up with water changes! 50% each week is a good start--
to go further w/ Sol.. My guy has been "free fed" since I got him at 5-6" and I've seen no impact on his overall health.. if anything he's about perfect imo on weight. now he's 12" and eats just as greedily. he'll "ballon" up the first few days I toss feeders in. but then he'll go a day w/ no feeders. at which I feed him some pellets at night. then re-start my weekly dump of feeders. sustained "chubbyness" in older fish is bad. but ime w/ most aquarium fish the first year you generally can not over-feed them. Just keep up w/ the water changes. personally I do 25% 2x a week. One right before I introduce the feeders, and the second 2 days later. I also try not to let the tank run to long w/out feeders in it, so my bioload stays as consistant as possible.
MonsterMinis;4155000; said:
Thats exactly whats going on. The 3 eat about 40 minnows over 2 days. They seem to like to eat the rosey reds over the fish bait minnows. I had a small incident with a crawfish attacking my smallest gar, and had minor damage to the snout. Do gar scar over? Hes eating fine and it only looks cosmetic. I guess your not supposed to put a pleco in there, so I used a crawfish to keep the minnows that my gar kill for the hell of it at bay when i'm gone. Mistake... Crawfish was removed and put into another tank where it was killed by other crawfish and eaten... I guess nature read my mind on that one because I was so mad I was just gonna microwave him.
