Can I feed Sea Caught Fresh Fish to my Spotted Gar?

[RD.]

An old thread that the OP might find interesting.....

Live vs Prepared vs Pellet

Since I am still new in the world of monster fishes, I have been doing very little posting and a whole lot of reading on this board. One of the things that I've noticed is many people have threads proclaiming that their gars are finally eating pellets or prepared whole foods instead of feeders...

www.monsterfishkeepers.com

At that time both Pejelarto P Polypterus , and Solomon E_americanus worked with gar in captivity for years, and while it's a long read with the odd derailment along the way, there is a lot of info that someone new to feeding gars can glean.

Good luck with your gar.

 

[Lepisosteus]

Not prone to parasites, from eating live food? I think that someone is talking out of their arse. Live foods come with a certain amount of risk, no matter the species of fish eating them.

This is actually an interesting topic. In the reef hobby there is a method commonly referred to as the paul B method. Simply put it means that no fish is quarantined and any parasites it carries are intentionally introduced into the system. The fish are then fed natural bacteria filled foods (commonly live foods or frozen) to increase the fishes immunity. The fish almost always overcomes the parasite and the fish then becomes “immune” to it. You then have to continuously reintroduce parasites in order for the fish to not lose their immunity and increase the diversity. I am actually giving this a try on my new system, for a lot of people it has worked well. 40+ year old reef systems following this method have never lost a fish. So in a sense, live food can reduce the chance of parasites/illness by increasing natural bacteria within the fish.

As for your gar, I would do as RD suggested and freeze the fish for at least 24 hours to 1 week. This will reduce the risk. I would not say gars have a higher immunity to internal parasites. Externally possibly, as they do have thicker/larger skin and scales then most fish.

Feeding salt water fish will be fine. Rinse the flesh of the fish in rodi/freshwater before feeding. To convert the gar to pellets wait until it reaches a year old. Then add some pellets to the tank during feeding time before the frozen. Eventually they will take the pellets. You can even stuff some pellets into the frozen food.