HOW LONG CAN F/GARS STAY WITH OUT FOOD

[Divasen]

Hi guys and gals

I will like find out how long can a f/gar stay without food as soon i will be trying to get my f/gar to eat pallets instead of live fish as he is close to reaching the 12inch mark as i have been advise that 12inch is a good size to starve a f/gar until it takes pallets.

 

[Exile]

Mine went two weeks without eating when I first got them. They began accepting shrimp after that.

I also have gotten them to eat cichlids pellets without any starving. I feed every 3-4 days and one time I was out of shrimp so I put a buncha pellets in instead. It took them about 20minutes to muster the courage but once they did, they were bloated with pellets in no time. I was pleasantly surprised.


Good luck.

 

[Divasen]

Thanks Exile

 

[barracuda123]

i think they can go 2-3 weeks without food

 

[OH10fiero]

Gars can go months without food so a few weeks will be nothing for him. If you have other fish that eat the foods you want your Gar to eat that will help him along to discover his new food source, other than that switching a Gar over to prepared foods is not that hard.

 

[Divasen]

Gars can go months without food so a few weeks will be nothing for him. If you have other fish that eat the foods you want your Gar to eat that will help him along to discover his new food source, other than that switching a Gar over to prepared foods is not that hard.

Thank you
i currently have him in a tank with polyterus, will be moving him to my 1000liter tank in a week or two once all the feeders are done. Thereafter he will be with some ciclids and poly's which eat pallets. I hope then he will take the pallets

 

[OH10fiero]

Be careful with the Cichlids as they are eating machines of a different nature. Cichlids are fast fish that can easily eat any and all food quickly leaving nothing for your Gar to eat even if he wants to. The other option would be to put so much food in the tank that the Cichlids don't have enough time to consume the amount and the Gar gets to eat, this can very easily lead to water problems.
I have Poly's in with my Gars and they all get along fine, I would not put Cichlids in with Gars because the problems involved with eating will more than likely cause issues in short order.

 

[iloveoscars702]

Try feeding smelt or silver sides, they look like feeders to the gar l, but already dead

 

[Divasen]

Be careful with the Cichlids as they are eating machines of a different nature. Cichlids are fast fish that can easily eat any and all food quickly leaving nothing for your Gar to eat even if he wants to. The other option would be to put so much food in the tank that the Cichlids don't have enough time to consume the amount and the Gar gets to eat, this can very easily lead to water problems.
I have Poly's in with my Gars and they all get along fine, I would not put Cichlids in with Gars because the problems involved with eating will more than likely cause issues in short order.

Thanks for the advise, i currently have only a pearl eartheater, Not sure if i am ging to get any other type of ciclids as eartheater are quite good towards other fish. I have not decided on what i am going to do. But i will try the over feeding thereafter i will remove the left over food.

Try feeding smelt or silver sides, they look like feeders to the gar l, but already dead

I am planning to try to get my gar on lance fish after i move him as i still got about 100 feeder gold fish to get rid of.

 

[OH10fiero]

Almost forgot, you could use feeding tongs on the Gar, just wiggle the dead fish in front of the Gar and he may snap at it thinking its live. This way you could "target" feed your Gar, as you already know a cichlid needs no target feeding to get its fair share.
If you only plan on one Cichlid with your Gar you should ok and may not need to do anything but feed the appropriate amount for the fish in the tank, but if you have a school of Cichlids the Gar will never stand a chance on getting any food unless you over feed everything in the tank.