haha and i was just thinking of picking 2 gators up...perun, most of the large captive gators i've seen are right around 4' though. but mostly in public aquariums. when you refer to captive specimens, are you refering to those in public or private captivity? or both?
Hmm, what is this?
- Thread starter bahamaqt00
- Start date
xander;3952405; said:
I'm referring to captive raised fish.... period..
This means either in Private of Public aquariums. I'm not talking about an already 4 foot fish taken into captivity but rather a Juvenile fish raised in captivity. Key distinction needs to be made here on this.
I thinks Cuban might be good to extract from that also.. Stupidly touchy fish... Not that it matters as availability is close to just zero.
Maybe Shortnose as well IMO, but really Shorts are actually manageable for the hobby, you just need to get their very quirky behaviors and learn how to treat them accordingly. Treat them right with the right conditions and they do fine.. Treat them wrong and the spaztastic, overachiever bastards are a suicide case waiting to happen. Put them in a big tank full of non-conspecific tankmates you may as well start the stop watch and bet with your friends as to when it is going to kill it's self...(Might make your money back that way) Kind of touchy fish that requires just a bit attention to detail and some care in Husbandry protocol.
Tropicals are just awesome hobby fish and likely the best gar for the hobbyist one can find. They eat anything, they are hardy as hell, they tolerate other species and have a really chilled out attitude. Unfortunate that they are still just very rare and very difficult to obtain. Given that though Florida gar are a really good fish and the fact they are in the top position as far as Mainstream availability goes is not surprising because of this. Actual Market has well selected them for this..
It really is some great information, perun. In fact I am going to pick up my third gator gar after work today. It is a 2 footer and was sold to me for a token price of 10 dollars by a guy who cannot house it any longer . As now I know they will not turn into 5, 6 foot monsters, I am quite confident that I can keep them for life and may even add more to my collection.
m245;3953510; said:
Don't get carried away and deal with too much. Three is more than enough and then some. Just because stastically they will not get a certain size does not mean they will not or can not achieve a large size and it also does not change much about the fact they are not an easy animal to deal with in the first place. One is a challenge as it is add three more and your just compounding the potential and real problems.
Perun;3953882; said:
definitely agree. in short response to previous comments:
1 - 3 gators is definitely asking for trouble...you will still get a hierarchy there and you will get some beaten up gars. add tankmates and it will be even more trouble.
the shortnoses and Cubans COULD be ok gar species to keep, but i think their conditions are such that few would actually pay close and proper attention to them...most want to keep gars with many other species of other types of fishes, which doesn't usually work well with shorties, and Cubans are just too sensitive to water parameters or at least pH instability.
i think it's a strange continuum with gar species to keep from beginner to advanced, and if you combine species, it also adds a challenge to the setup.
IMO it goes from beginner to intermediate to advanced in this continuum:
Florida>Tropical>>Spotted>>>longnose>>shortnose>Cuban>>>Alligator
i think the middle could definitely be debatable, but i'm pretty confident in the endpoints. of course most would like to mix pbass and oscars and wolf fish and whatever else with these fishes, which of course adds to the variability of success--
--solomon
Perun;3953882; said:
lol.. you're right. I was a bit carried away. Gator gar over 1 feet is very rare in lfs, I just couldn't resist the offer.
E_americanus;3954572; said:
I am quite surprised to learn that there is hierarchy in the gar community. In my limited experience with gars, I've found that they're pretty simple minded animals. When a gar sees another fish, it sizes it up to see if it can fit into its stomarch. If the answer is no, it just leaves it alone and doesn't even bother to show aggressiveness towards it, hence you often see fl gars schooling with gator gars until they're eaten. I've yet to see in gars any complex aggressiveness behaviour other predatory show. Of course I could be very wrong as I only started to keep gars a year ago.
m245;3954910; said:
exactly. i'm not highlighting the statement to be negative in any way, just saying that with further experience with these fishes you'll notice more and more as their interactions in captivity (and in the wild) are more complex than just simply sizing up prey. they aren't as complex as cichlids or puffers, but they aren't completely brainless robots either.
there has been a long-standing hierarchy in my big gar tank, and new fish definitely get "initiated" as they get shredded upon introduction (luckily gar fins heal fast), but this sort of behavior has been going on for years with gars present in the tank and new gars being added.
this is usually easier to notice with different gar species in the same tank, but if you watch them carefully, you would see hierarchy in a group of FL gars as well--
--solomon
