Gar Pond Stocking

[screaminleeman]

Wish me luck! Tom (http://www.rfitropicalfish.com/gars) is shipping five "banded columbian gar" and five "spotted columbian gar" from Indianapolis today for delivery tomorrow. I will post pics upon reciept and acclimation.

From the pictures on the site the "banded columbian" appear to be slightly more juvinile "florida gar" than the "spotted columbian" are.

Tom is getting a shipment of the "needle nose columbian gar" next week and is shipping me five when they come in. These look seriously interesting in that they appear to be true "Longnose Gar", my favorite Gar I have kept!

I will post pics again when available. Tom has awsome prices for Gar from what I have seen available. If the needlenose columbian gar turn out as I hope to be LNG, I think I may have solved the "stocking" of my farm pond challenge! After a decade of keeping LMB in the farm pond (Boring to tears!!), and my SMB finally died, I am excited to finally get some "interesting" fish stocked back in there.

The SMB was cool, agressive and active. The LMB are just BORING, LAZY and virtually motionless.

ScreaminLeemans' Gar and Bowfin water hole! Hot Dang!

 

[HungDang]

what are banded Colombian gar and spotted Colombian gar?
According to the pictures on the website, I think they are just FLG!

 

[Wiggles92]

what are banded Colombian gar and spotted Colombian gar?
According to the pictures on the website, I think they are just FLG!

x2. The "Banded Columbian gar" and "Spotted Columbian gar" are just your standard juvenile Florida gars. The "Needle Nose Columbian gar" do look like they could be longnose gars, but only time will tell since the pictures on the website are a bit on the murky side.

Regardless of their ID, you're going to have your work cut out for you if you want to get them to survive in your pond through the winter since they're so small.

 

[screaminleeman]

Pics

 

[screaminleeman]

More pics

 

[E_americanus]

not sure if i understood the initial post properly, but are these new fish supposed to go into a farm pond this season? if so, they will most likely die off. gars of that size (depending on where they are geographically) will need a full growing season (or more if raised in captivity initially) to survive overwinter mortality. at that size, they were very unlikely make it--
--solomon

 

[screaminleeman]

not sure if i understood the initial post properly, but are these new fish supposed to go into a farm pond this season? if so, they will most likely die off. gars of that size (depending on where they are geographically) will need a full growing season (or more if raised in captivity initially) to survive overwinter mortality. at that size, they were very unlikely make it--
--solomon

I would like to see them in the farm pond by 2013. I am still seriously in doubt of placing Logan (My original gar - a LNG closing in on two foot long) into the farm pond in 2010. I still have two of the original largemouth bass I stocked in the pond around a decade ago, and are over 16". The LMB life cycle is not much longer than these two fish have lived in my pond and I caught them wild at around 8". They will be gone of natural causes before 2013.

Logan is possible for this season, but I will most likely transition him in spring of 2012. I have one of my three original Florida Gars I got from TFD last year that is over a foot, and is slated for transfer in Spring of 2012 as well.

The three gars that I got from a LFS a couple months ago (Labeled as S.A. Charcain - Some where, but I selected the TRUE Florida gars mixed in the tank!), as well as these five "columbian banded & columbian spotted" gars I got from RFItropical, are slated for transfer to the farm pond in late Spring of 2013 or possibly early fall of 2013.

I also have migrant guests in the way of snapping turtles frequent my pond on occasion, and I want to make sure the gar are mature enough to protect themselves.

I was very happy to see that the fish that I recieved matched the fish "pictured" on the website. It is VERY unerving as a relative newbie INTENTIONALLY buying a fish labeled as a species that you will have less than nothing to do with going on the notion that the vendor has identified the fish incorrectly and it happens to actually be a species that is of interest to me. You experts may feel comfortable with this, but I have much learning required before this is a "safe" practice!

I know that it has been done with success in the past raising Florida Gar in mid-atlantic area freshwater, but I am still slightly more concerned with the migration of my Florida Gars to the farm pond than I am Logan, my LNG!

Rest assured I will keep these babies in incrseaing sized growouts until they are strong enough to make the move. I currently have these gar in small growout tanks. A 70G and a 90G.

 

[Lepisosteus platyrhincus]

Keep us updated!!

 

[wcgunns]

How big is your pond? I would have thought your 10 year old LMB should be alot bigger than 16". My LMB was 3"-4" when I got him this spring and is now pushing 13".

 

[screaminleeman]

How big is your pond? I would have thought your 10 year old LMB should be alot bigger than 16". My LMB was 3"-4" when I got him this spring and is now pushing 13".

It is a natural spring fed farm pond over 100 feet across and I have dredged it to 15' deep. You think that the size is strange after a decade, check this out. When I put the bass a decade ago, I had 8 total bass (1 SMB & 7 LMB). There was already thousands upon thousands of tadpoles in the pond after refilling after the dredge. I did not stock with Bluegills until the following year.

Over the years the local neighborhood kids or whatever has taken it's toll on the bass population, and as of now, all that remains is two LMB. The wierdiest thing is that there were all 8 bass for several years before they started dissappearing. They NEVER mated, like the previous population that I had had before I dredged the pond deeper. WTF? Could I have gotten all 7 male or female LMB? I am not certain of the exact length, and this is just a rough estimate of 16" and could be way bigger. A neighbor did have one of my bass mounted that he caught out of my pond. I was not thrilled to find this out but what can you do after the fact. It was told that it weighed at 6 pounds. The two bass that remain are larger than that one was.

Another curious point, The LMB are pathetic, lazy and OUTRAGEOUSLY boring fish. If I had it in me, I would just kill the damn things to allow for a halfway interesting fish to be stocked in my pond. I thought the SMB was suppose to be like a "pansy" fish compared to the LMB. Not So! My SMB was one of the most active uber agressive fish that I have seen. How the LMB got popularity over SMB is allien to me.