Hey guys,
I have finally regained the "courage" to repost in this forum after my last bout of stupidity set straight by Pejelajarto.
I was under the impression that since the entire reason for my keeping "gar" from day one was to stock them in my natural spring fed pond that it was a "good" idea to keep them fed live.
Today in a different thread (Feeding pellet vs live) I was linked to review a post from a year ago on the topic. To my surprise I found a quote from Solomon so completely and totally opposing what pejelajarto ripped me with that I am utterly forced to ask.
I think that Pejelajarto was very angry with me, and I am uncertain as to whether his response was out of sheer anger, or if this is newer data discovered in the past 1 year.
The gist:
Me
It is NOT going to be an option for my gar to "not know how to hunt".
__________________________________________________________
Pejelajarto
And so you think innate, likely genetically innate, behavior can deprogrammed in a 200 million+ year old fish ? OK now that is close to the most F-ing retarded thing I've read for a bit.
No patience to go further as I see little point at this junction......
Going back under my Rock.....
I like turtles
______________________________________________________________________
At this point from the linked thread that I was directed to:
Originally Posted by Lepisosteus platyrhincus;4365314;
any tips for getting the gar to take pellets? Im not against pellets, just IMO u cant feed just one kind of pellet to a gar(or any fish) and expect it to be the pennicle of health. similar to my dog. i cant give her just her dog food(enginered to be healthy) and espect her to be super healthy. she gets her dog food as a staple and other food, rawhides and such for other various vitamens and such.
My gar wont take pellets. they will eat or try to anything but pellets. well correction for some reason now they refuse earth worms. dunno why they used to eat them but simply refuse now
. but id love a tip. would help fatten the shorty up alittle. little bugger burns through food way too fast
_______________________________________________________________
From Solomon:
i think this has been said many times in this thread, but you CAN feed just one type of pellet and the fish will be very healthy and not require another type of food...provided it is the RIGHT type of pellet. this is true even with gars, and many of the alligator and tropical gar hatcheries feed only pellets and trust me when i say their fish are just fine and of high-quality stock. some of these hatcheries switch to live for some of their fish, but this is usually only in prepping them for release into the wild to re-stock depleted populations, obviously a gar in this case would have to learn how to catch food (in home aquaria this is NOT a necessity, no matter how much we may think so).
as for converting to pellets, i will be quite honest with you in that i seldom have the patience to train gars onto pellets. in my experience either they take it when i offer it to them or they don't. when converting to non-live, i concentrate more of my efforts on getting them to take frozen foods, as these are usually more accepted by gars with less effort. pellet conversion CAN be done, and richard has some good techniques for that, so check out any of this postings on the subject, or i'm sure he can post again here.
i do plan on revisiting the "hide-the-pellet-in the food" technique to make sure the gars are getting more bang for their buck, but other than that, some of my older fish will just not take pellets (i.e. old Cubans).
some species are much more prone to take pellets for whatever reason, gator gars are garbage disposals throughout their life, so just offering pellets at various stages even starting with YOY will usually result in acceptance.
t-gars will usually take them since that is the singular food item they are given on the farms.
Lepisosteus genus fish will take pellets, but IME this takes a bit more effort, and several people here have commented on the true spotted gars being finicky with pellets (and some even with regular non-live such as frozen fish).
it also boils down to your individual fish. the general advice is keep offering it to them, and offer it to them where you would normally drop their normal food. be sure to remove the pellets if they don't take it during the regular feeding period, and then just offer up again next time.
as i alluded to before, you can always cut a hole into a chunk of fish or shrimp and hide a pellet in there, at least this way your fish is getting some of the needed materials they are lacking in straight up frozen foods and especially live.
hope that helps!--
--solomon
I first went the obvious route of going to "pond stocking" companies and found NONE for either Gar or Bowfin. The fish hatchery for pond stocking of ancient native fish was not an option that I was able to locate. Since the supply was unavailable for stocking, I went the aquaria trade route to aquire these ancient native species for stocking in my pond. Two of the eight original LMB that I threw in the pond after dredging it a decade ago are still alive in the pond. They have already exceeded their normal life expectancy and will not be there too much longer. I do not want to "kill" them though and am attempting to raise the Gar and Bowfin to ample size that they will not become prey prior to stocking them in the pond.
The only gar that I have that will even be ready by Summer 2012 is my oldest LNG that is closing in on two feet. All of the Floridas are slated for 2013.
Now, first and foremost, I owe Pejelajarto an apology. I was extremely rude, and getting any kind of accurate and serious data is highly unlikely given my inpolite position.
Pejelajarto, for insulting your sensitivities I sincerely apologize. Not the easiest thing for a Russian, but to be perfectly honest I did not intend the statment about fish ed. as an insult to your dedication in the field. I honestly intended it to mean that you could benefit from fishing is all.
With that out of the way, I have been focusing on getting all of my Gar pellet trained. I have had tremendous success in getting my latest batch of Florida Gar to accept 3MM NLS Thera + A.
I am now concerned that I am possibly not taking the best care in raising my Juvinile gar for pond stocking. Should I continue on toward 100% pellet feeding for the Gar stock intended for my farm pond, or take the risk of potential parasitic infection and allow them to continue to hunt until their release into the farm pond?
I have finally regained the "courage" to repost in this forum after my last bout of stupidity set straight by Pejelajarto.
I was under the impression that since the entire reason for my keeping "gar" from day one was to stock them in my natural spring fed pond that it was a "good" idea to keep them fed live.
Today in a different thread (Feeding pellet vs live) I was linked to review a post from a year ago on the topic. To my surprise I found a quote from Solomon so completely and totally opposing what pejelajarto ripped me with that I am utterly forced to ask.
I think that Pejelajarto was very angry with me, and I am uncertain as to whether his response was out of sheer anger, or if this is newer data discovered in the past 1 year.
The gist:
Me
It is NOT going to be an option for my gar to "not know how to hunt".
__________________________________________________________
Pejelajarto
And so you think innate, likely genetically innate, behavior can deprogrammed in a 200 million+ year old fish ? OK now that is close to the most F-ing retarded thing I've read for a bit.
No patience to go further as I see little point at this junction......
Going back under my Rock.....
I like turtles
______________________________________________________________________
At this point from the linked thread that I was directed to:
any tips for getting the gar to take pellets? Im not against pellets, just IMO u cant feed just one kind of pellet to a gar(or any fish) and expect it to be the pennicle of health. similar to my dog. i cant give her just her dog food(enginered to be healthy) and espect her to be super healthy. she gets her dog food as a staple and other food, rawhides and such for other various vitamens and such.
My gar wont take pellets. they will eat or try to anything but pellets. well correction for some reason now they refuse earth worms. dunno why they used to eat them but simply refuse now
. but id love a tip. would help fatten the shorty up alittle. little bugger burns through food way too fast_______________________________________________________________
From Solomon:
i think this has been said many times in this thread, but you CAN feed just one type of pellet and the fish will be very healthy and not require another type of food...provided it is the RIGHT type of pellet. this is true even with gars, and many of the alligator and tropical gar hatcheries feed only pellets and trust me when i say their fish are just fine and of high-quality stock. some of these hatcheries switch to live for some of their fish, but this is usually only in prepping them for release into the wild to re-stock depleted populations, obviously a gar in this case would have to learn how to catch food (in home aquaria this is NOT a necessity, no matter how much we may think so).
as for converting to pellets, i will be quite honest with you in that i seldom have the patience to train gars onto pellets. in my experience either they take it when i offer it to them or they don't. when converting to non-live, i concentrate more of my efforts on getting them to take frozen foods, as these are usually more accepted by gars with less effort. pellet conversion CAN be done, and richard has some good techniques for that, so check out any of this postings on the subject, or i'm sure he can post again here.
i do plan on revisiting the "hide-the-pellet-in the food" technique to make sure the gars are getting more bang for their buck, but other than that, some of my older fish will just not take pellets (i.e. old Cubans).
some species are much more prone to take pellets for whatever reason, gator gars are garbage disposals throughout their life, so just offering pellets at various stages even starting with YOY will usually result in acceptance.
t-gars will usually take them since that is the singular food item they are given on the farms.
Lepisosteus genus fish will take pellets, but IME this takes a bit more effort, and several people here have commented on the true spotted gars being finicky with pellets (and some even with regular non-live such as frozen fish).
it also boils down to your individual fish. the general advice is keep offering it to them, and offer it to them where you would normally drop their normal food. be sure to remove the pellets if they don't take it during the regular feeding period, and then just offer up again next time.
as i alluded to before, you can always cut a hole into a chunk of fish or shrimp and hide a pellet in there, at least this way your fish is getting some of the needed materials they are lacking in straight up frozen foods and especially live.
hope that helps!--
--solomon
I first went the obvious route of going to "pond stocking" companies and found NONE for either Gar or Bowfin. The fish hatchery for pond stocking of ancient native fish was not an option that I was able to locate. Since the supply was unavailable for stocking, I went the aquaria trade route to aquire these ancient native species for stocking in my pond. Two of the eight original LMB that I threw in the pond after dredging it a decade ago are still alive in the pond. They have already exceeded their normal life expectancy and will not be there too much longer. I do not want to "kill" them though and am attempting to raise the Gar and Bowfin to ample size that they will not become prey prior to stocking them in the pond.
The only gar that I have that will even be ready by Summer 2012 is my oldest LNG that is closing in on two feet. All of the Floridas are slated for 2013.
Now, first and foremost, I owe Pejelajarto an apology. I was extremely rude, and getting any kind of accurate and serious data is highly unlikely given my inpolite position.
Pejelajarto, for insulting your sensitivities I sincerely apologize. Not the easiest thing for a Russian, but to be perfectly honest I did not intend the statment about fish ed. as an insult to your dedication in the field. I honestly intended it to mean that you could benefit from fishing is all.
With that out of the way, I have been focusing on getting all of my Gar pellet trained. I have had tremendous success in getting my latest batch of Florida Gar to accept 3MM NLS Thera + A.
I am now concerned that I am possibly not taking the best care in raising my Juvinile gar for pond stocking. Should I continue on toward 100% pellet feeding for the Gar stock intended for my farm pond, or take the risk of potential parasitic infection and allow them to continue to hunt until their release into the farm pond?
