Digestion GARS.

[screaminleeman]

When your gars get very large you will see it, at least in mine I do.

My longnose is approching 2 feet long, and still no poo siteing? I may be underfeeding though, because my three florida gars are also over 1 foot long and are the same way.

I am very suprised to hear that they (gar) are in any way comparable in digestive efficiency to warmer water fish like plecos, cichlids, charcin etc.

All other fish I have are machines. Obviously variant 2 canidates. My Gar do eat every day at least once. I wonder if it is a pellet thing though, as only my baby LNG (< 1') is a pellet eater.

 

[Lepisosteus platyrhincus]

This is classic sticky material!

I would disagree with most saying variant two. In keeping of Florida & LNG, I have yet to EVER see one poop. I am sure that they must sometime, but I have never witnessed it. I can not say the same for ANY of my cichlids that I have kept. I'd go as far as to say that the Nile Tilapia fry that I bought this January (1 - 2" range) that are now all over 1' long have no turd cutter as they always seem to have a poo trail twice the length of their body attached to their anus.

they poop, but it seems like rarely

 

[Sidrock]

I keep my Gars in a bare tank and I have seen them poop (or their poop on the tank floor) from back since they were 4 inch..

I think a lot depends on what you feed them and how much you feed them.. My Gars (2 FL and 2 Gator) are on a seafood diet (fresh shrimp, jumbo krill, etc etc.)

-Sid

 

[Polypterus]

Someone pinch me.. Is this thread for real?
Yeah they poop... Everything poops. Gar are not an exception to this. Depending on feed type it may be more or less noticed. In some cases you get a typical spiral shaped doo doo in other cases it is more or less broken up or fragmented. Fact is though it is there and in the tank and often it is difficult to siphon.

Take it from someone that has seen a lot of Gars poop and has also carefully looked at that poop for many years. Yeah they poop and quite often....

 

[screaminleeman]

Someone pinch me.. Is this thread for real?
Yeah they poop... Everything poops. Gar are not an exception to this. Depending on feed type it may be more or less noticed. In some cases you get a typical spiral shaped doo doo in other cases it is more or less broken up or fragmented. Fact is though it is there and in the tank and often it is difficult to siphon.

Take it from someone that has seen a lot of Gars poop and has also carefully looked at that poop for many years. Yeah they poop and quite often....

I believe that the OP was questioning the metabolism of the gar(s) rather then if the anus was at all functional. I still have observed in my LNG's and Florida gars a metabolism that has far greater food utilization capacity then most other freshwater fish that I have kept.

Case in point, take a common pleco that weighs 1 pound and a gar that also weighs 1 pound. Place them in bare tanks next to one another. Feed them the exact quantity and type of food at the same intervals. After one week compare the amount of poo on each tanks floor. I bet the difference would be vast!

 

[rostratusgar]

Thank you for the replies guys. So I take it that this is the same as other fish.

 

[MonsterMinis]

Plecos have alot more "roughage" in their diet.. lol.. this thread cracked me up. But I have noticed since I've been feeding more krill and pellets and less live. Their poop has more.. consistancy to it.. so we don't see them poop as much as we think as it's fairly loose and more or less disinitgrates in the water.. leaving no "turds" to see. As most Gar owners feed alot of fish to their gar in many forms.