good staple?

[aidenb]

so my gar still refuses pellets but will eat dead food, are the frozen minnows you get from the bait shop and market shrimp and good staple for him?
Also, does anyone know what the green on his head is? He's always had it

 

[xander]

at least he's on dead food already. that's easier that getting it off live from scratch. id go with shrimp. or, u can throw in the dead feeders from one point till it's used to that being the "food corner"..then start alternating between dead feeders n shrimp/pelllets

 

[aidenb]

it swims away if i put pellets near him, but loves when i handfeed it the frozen minnows and shrimp

 

[Madding]

I would say go easy on the frozen baitfish. They're not bad but some fish end up regurgitating bones and whatnot if overfed the stuff. I'd go with shrimp, krill and tilapia fillets.

 

[E_americanus]

green on the head looks normal to me, so i wouldn't be worried (unless i am missing something from the pic).

if your minnows from the bait shop are frozen, then they should be just fine to feed (the freezing process will kill the majority of potential parasites). fish actually grow quite well and large on whole fish, it's just that our feeders in the pet industry are usually wrought with parasites and other pathogens...freezing them and then feeding them would be fine.
complement the minnows with frozen shrimp and you should do just fine.

the staple for my gars is frozen shrimp, and i mix that up every now and then with frozen tilapia, smelt, and occasionally frozen minnows. i usually offer up some pellets each feeding but only a few gars will take them (croc II and tropical gars actually eat algae wafers too!) --
--solomon

 

[aidenb]

just wondering about the green cause i'd never seen the colouration on a gar. The gar is super picky, it refuses any form of fish fillet just swims up to it, touches it with his nose then swims away, only accepting shrimp, which is why I was surprised he ate the frozen bait fish.
Also, would stuffing the bait fish with pellets be a good idea?

 

[E_americanus]

just wondering about the green cause i'd never seen the colouration on a gar. The gar is super picky, it refuses any form of fish fillet just swims up to it, touches it with his nose then swims away, only accepting shrimp, which is why I was surprised he ate the frozen bait fish.
Also, would stuffing the bait fish with pellets be a good idea?

you can stuff the baitfish and see if he will take them...would be a good delivery of the pellets...just time-consuming (although if you're just feeding one gar it's not that bad).

as for the fish fillet, you may have already tried this, but when weaning gars off non-live, i've had a lot of success with cutting the tilapia fillet into strips the size of a minnow and the gars usually take those down after the first or second offering.

as for the green on the gar, if you look at some of the pinned topics with gar ID (or the links in my signature) you will see that both spotted and Florida gars (yours is a Florida) can develop some pretty impressive green markings on the head.

good luck!--
--solomon

 

[aidenb]

i'm fine stuffing the baitfish, he takes a while to feed anyway cause I have to hand feed it otherwise my datnoid eats all of the food, just wanted to know about the green because starts on his head and continues all the way down the snout but i'm glad its just natural colouration

 

[Madding]

Yep a lot of Floridas have that really insane green coloring in certain spots... it almost looks like algae it's so vibrant.