Gar Quiz - the return - ID the fish

[Conner]

sounds good; once this one wraps, i'll shoot your a message (or post) to post your pic and we can move on from there.

reviewing all these photos definitely makes me wish i had a bit more time to spend with the pet fishes...but i should probably keep working at the whole dissertation thing if i ever hope to finish --
--solomon

But then how would you get the school/grants to pay for all these great gar that you get to raise?

 

[Egon]

I think the lowest one in the pic is a Tropical. It has a heavier body than the others and it looks just like my T. I've never owned the others so I'm not going to speculate. The bottom one is for sure a T Gar .....................I think? LOL

 

[E_americanus]

ok leaving it open until later this afternoon/evening, then will post the answers. seems like we should set a standard ~2-day period for the quizzes to keep them rolling.--
--solomon

 

[sbuse]

i agree and stick to my first sets of id's...

 

[E_americanus]

ok here are the answers...this was a tough one given the particular difficulty in ID'ing two closely related species AND also a hybrid:

starting from the top left and going clockwise -

1 - longnose gar
2 - crocodile gar "type II" (A. spatula x L. oculatus) - this guy changed pattern quite a bit a few times while growing.
3 - YOY Florida gar
4 - Florida gar (~1-2 years old)
5 - shortnose gar

BONUS: the tail in the lower left belongs to a Synodontis eupterus catfish...it was from this setup that i found that synos will also suck gar slime if they are hungry enough (the catfish was fine with the gars for a long time and worked well as a clean-up feeder, but i was out in the field for a while and he must have gotten a little hungrier). Syno was removed and i now advise others against it the same as plecos and flagtails.

ID process (main things to look for) :
1 - very long snout, elongate and slender body (relative to other gars)

2 - croc II - this is a tough one, unless you've seen pics of the fish before or know anything about crocs, you probably didn't guess croc II. stocky body suggests Atractosteus genus, but snout is more elongate than any of those species. pattern is dorsally a mix of spotted and some blotchiness of a YOY gator, lateral the pattern is almost completely random for a gar. the next color phase after this was the almost black & white "dalmatian" pattern.

3 - YOY Florida gar...at this time (photo was from 2005) we didn't have solid comparisons of true spotted gars...fish that looked like this were all from LFS and we now know they are FL gars.

4 - older FL gar...standard pattern you see on most LFS FL gars

5 - body slender, but not as much as longnose...snout long and slender, but not as long as longnose. pattern (or lack thereof) also indicates shortnose gar.

thanks to everyone who participated...lots of good guesses, and everyone at least got a couple ID's correct!

i believe xander has a new one to post, so go ahead and post to this thread to keep things rolling.--
--solomon

 

[E_americanus]

just to show you the contrast in pattern as the croc II developed, compare the quiz photo with this one (just a few months later) in the "dalmatian" phase:

--solomon

 

[Egon]

WOW

 

[RedDwarf]

That croc II sure does have a spectacular pattern. To bad they are almost impossible to get, at least for me.

 

[xander]

i myself am not completely sure of the answers. but we can all take guesses eh

try guessing as many gars as possible, including those with partial body parts missing

ps: im not completely sure if i've posted this pic before.

as above in sol's post, start with the gar in the left top corner, the one without its head pictured, then move on clockwise

i thought this would be a fun fact...although i posted this, solomon/richard are probably going to be the ones revealing if we're right or wrong

 

[xander]

That croc II sure does have a spectacular pattern. To bad they are almost impossible to get, at least for me.

take solace in the fact it's almost impossible for everyone..i was planning a cross global heist trip to "the tank" to steal it...but then realised i'd have no way of getting a 25" fish back here alive...