How to make my Florida Gar eat pellets

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
ricksnipe

ricksnipe

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Oct 10, 2012
42
4
8
Landover, MD
Good Morning MFK!

I been having this issue for sometime now. I need some advice on how to get my 11in Florida Gar off feeders and on pellets. Can someone please help?
 
Have you tried not feeding it for a week then offering pellets? Sometimes you have to start with shrimp or tilapia to get them off of live food and get them to accept "dead" food.
 
I have starved it for bout a week but i haven't tried "dead food". He hasn't ate in bout a week so i will def try the tilapia. Now how should i present it to him. He is in tank with a RTC and a Pescock Bass. The bass wont touch the tilapia , but the RTC will.
 
Hi, the way da worked for is get some crickets and some brown floating pellets about da same size, feed da crickets da first two days, then the next day add a few pellets into da mix and carry on decreasing da pellets as days go on, the ting I believe is dat u need to teach ur gar dat wen it sees some ting floating it means food, and once it learns dat it will soon start trying new things to eat. Goodluck let us no how it goes

Sent from my HTC Desire S using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
 
Hi, the way da worked for is get some crickets and some brown floating pellets about da same size, feed da crickets da first two days, then the next day add a few pellets into da mix and carry on decreasing da pellets as days go on, the ting I believe is dat u need to teach ur gar dat wen it sees some ting floating to means food, and once it learns dat it will soon start trying new things to eat. Goodluck let us no how it goes

Sent from my HTC Desire S using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
 
My first gar I starved for about 2 weeks offering floating pellets each day. The second one I pellet trained I had to starve about a month and a half offering floating pellets. Give him time it will take them eventually.
If you want to try giving it shrimp or tilapia you'll want tongs to hold the meat so you don't get bit!
I didn't mess with any of these. First day I got them was the first day I started pellet training/starvation lol
 
There is zero need to starve the fish to get them onto pelleted feed. Do a search here on the site and you will find a tried and proven technique that work 99% of the time without making your fish suffer for it.

Here is total proof it does not work at all to pellet train gars though.. Gar just will not take pelleted feed.. none of them I tell yah..
[YT]<object width="560" height="315"><param name="movie" value="//www.youtube.com/v/0Hptme9gmaw?hl=en_US&amp;version=3&amp;rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="//www.youtube.com/v/0Hptme9gmaw?hl=en_US&amp;version=3&amp;rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="560" height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>[/YT]
 
lol, I found just letting the gar decide its ready worked best.... have you read the sticky about converting gar? I personally don't approve or reccomend starving any fish to get it onto other foods. For me the best "method" is to feed live 3-5day... let them fast a day or 2... offer pellets... next day back to live for the next 3-5 days... rinse and repeat... If your other fish are eating non-live foods your gar will figure it out on its own and not be compromised health wise by starving ect.

starving fish compromises their immune system, stresses them out, and essentially does nothing positive other then "maybe" getting your fish to eat foods that it doesn't want. not enough of a risk/reward for me.

And all my gar eat pellets.. but if I didn't feed those 2 big trops live/frozen fish they would start picking off my other gar for the fun of it, they've done it before in other tanks. and I didn't starve any of the 8 gar in my collection into pellets... they taught eachother/learned from other tank-mates.

And your other tank-mates might be the cause of his lack of conversion. some gar can be amazingly shy about feeding ( my 2 floridas are) boisterous fish like cats and bass can cause negative associations w/ feeding time. I feed my cats first this goes a long way towards maintain feeding peace in my set-up. If you don't already make sure your other fish are well fed before trying to entice the gar.
 
What I did for both of my gar was I would stop giving them feeders, but I would offer them just a little freeze dried krill every day. As soon as they start eating the krill (which may take a week or two) I would mix the krill with the pellets, after a couple weeks of feeding like that, they eat just pellets now, although the krill is sometimes mixed in to spike their appetite and live food is still offered as snacks occasionally.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
MonsterFishKeepers.com
Top Bottom