Gars-a-plenty....

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this is the most active you have been on mfk in awhile eric....lol.... yea it says forbiden for me too to look up your past threads...
 
Nic;1608735; said:
this is the most active you have been on mfk in awhile eric....lol.... yea it says forbiden for me too to look up your past threads...

I'm all caught up on deadlines, so that's why I'm more visible...LOL.
 
any advise on keeping the cubans? how're you keeping yours? there're very few guys keeping them and i'd like to know how different individuals are doing it
 
xander13;1609220; said:
any advise on keeping the cubans? how're you keeping yours? there're very few guys keeping them and i'd like to know how different individuals are doing it

Right now they're in one of the tanks (29-gallon) that I use as a hospital tank. I wasn't planning on getting them, but you know how impulse buys are, LOL. They're being kept with a similar sized (5-6") tropical gar that I took in and am growing up.

The tank has a canister filter (Eheim 2217) on it. The filter media is the stock ceramic rings and the ehfisubstrat along with the stock filter pads. I always have a bag of crushed coral in the filter as well to stabilize the ph in the tank as my water here is very soft. The ph is held steadily around 7.0-7.2 and the filter has been well established for a long time.

For extra oxygenization, I had a powerhead to move the water in there, but I elected to pull it out and replace it with an air bubbler as they seemed to dislike the current being created by the powerhead.

They all are doing very well. The store was feeding them feeder goldfish, however, upon trying some pieces of market fish, they expressed interest and one took it down right away. The others would chase it, but it would fall to the bottom. I'm positive that with a little bit of coaxing, they'll end up taking it. I'm not a big fan of feeder goldfish here and want to wean them as soon as possible. Hope this helps :).
 
DAMN IT!!! Just called SA and they have none left LOL impulse buys are the best...wish I had acted on impulse last sunday when there were 6 of them there... damn...Good luck with them though E
 
They all are doing very well. The store was feeding them feeder goldfish, however, upon trying some pieces of market fish, they expressed interest and one took it down right away. The others would chase it, but it would fall to the bottom. I'm positive that with a little bit of coaxing, they'll end up taking it. I'm not a big fan of feeder goldfish here and want to wean them as soon as possible.

Eric they will pretty much become a garbage disposal, just like other Atractosteus are, once they settle in. Mine pretty much feed on everything and anything. They become very aggressive about food in an almost Gator gar like manner.

One thing I'd caution is not to feed them and then do any significant water change. This frequently upsets them and causes them to puke their food. (unfortunate lesson learned the hard way)..
 
hey eric,

great collection of gars for sure, and congrats on picking up some Cubans. as richard said, they are great fish. if there is any way we can help out with advice on keeping them let us know...they are among the most challenging gar species, but once their sensitivities are accounted for, they are relatively simple to keep.

good that you already got them off live for the most part...and you may note that they generally aren't too keen on picking stuff off the bottom, so you may either want to make sure food is dropped right in front of their faces OR use a feeding stick. keeping them with the t-gars will probably encourage their feeding as well.

best of luck and keep us posted...oh yeah, great pics too!--
--solomon
 
Looks good....now we need a vid!
 
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