Thanks a lot everyone for responding. I have been reading this thread everyday as well as the threads on the Gar forums in an attempt to learn more about the optimum way to house and raise these monsters. A quick update on my gar, his color has returned and as of 8/8, it has officially been 4 days since I've had him. He has eaten 4 feeder rosy reds so far that all ranged from 1/10 to 1 1/2 inch long. He has grown from 4 inches to 4.3 inches. I will be attempting to feed him other live prey soon as to offer more variety, then offer some prepared foods, and then pellets due to the difficulty in the enticing of gars to accept pellet foods.
Live vs Prepared vs Pellet
- Thread starter KillaFish
- Start date
wow dude. just wow.RD.;4360042; said:
in red, if was just like that then it might work. fact is its not like that. now take all that stuff, freeze it. now dry it out. now mix it and smush it. add water back. now cook it. now dry it again. repeat in random order. congrats u have a pellet. pretty much what they do.
Sorry but one type of pellet will never be a proper diet. EVER. Variety will always be the way to go. We are gonna disagree here no matter what. fact is ill feed what i do u feed what u do. Ill enjoy the hopefull longjeveity(cant freakin spell! lol) of my fish's life u enjoy ur flash in the pan
hi all,
i was away for the weekend and am just catching up...very interesting thread to say the least. a great mix of good information and junk for an entertaining (but very much informative) read.
i'll try not to re-hash too much, but i will make a few comments bullet-point style (gearing my comments specifically toward gars, but obviously some can be more broadly applicable) :
- i think we all agree that variety is good.
- store-bought feeders are, for lack of better terms, junk food and carry with them many risks. feed with caution, and best not to feed as a staple. they are not equal to the prey fish that our gars eat in the wild.
- a high-quality pellet CAN serve as the singular food item for a gar that will take it, and it will be extremely healthy. look at the ingredients and dig a bit deeper into the pdf that was posted earlier and also do some further research. if the pellet has the necessary vitamins and minerals, etc etc then your fish can and will do just fine on the right pellet.
- high-quality pellets DO NOT equal cheeseburgers. there is of course a process to making the pellets, but this isn't the same as what we are talking about when we discuss "processed" human foods.
personally, and for my experiments and our other research projects, i feed live food to gars at early stages. this live food is mainly fish that comes from a pond system where the fish are essentially wild, they are not the same as store-bought feeders.
our larger adults and even yearling research fish are fed live fish from these ponds as well.
reGARding PET fish, i feed a mix of frozen fish/shrimp and pellets...some fish take one or the other or both. they are all healthy in the general sense, but the gars that take the pellets ARE in fact getting a better (more balanced and complete) diet than those that just take frozen.
--
--solomon
i was away for the weekend and am just catching up...very interesting thread to say the least. a great mix of good information and junk for an entertaining (but very much informative) read.
i'll try not to re-hash too much, but i will make a few comments bullet-point style (gearing my comments specifically toward gars, but obviously some can be more broadly applicable) :
- i think we all agree that variety is good.
- store-bought feeders are, for lack of better terms, junk food and carry with them many risks. feed with caution, and best not to feed as a staple. they are not equal to the prey fish that our gars eat in the wild.
- a high-quality pellet CAN serve as the singular food item for a gar that will take it, and it will be extremely healthy. look at the ingredients and dig a bit deeper into the pdf that was posted earlier and also do some further research. if the pellet has the necessary vitamins and minerals, etc etc then your fish can and will do just fine on the right pellet.
- high-quality pellets DO NOT equal cheeseburgers. there is of course a process to making the pellets, but this isn't the same as what we are talking about when we discuss "processed" human foods.
personally, and for my experiments and our other research projects, i feed live food to gars at early stages. this live food is mainly fish that comes from a pond system where the fish are essentially wild, they are not the same as store-bought feeders.
our larger adults and even yearling research fish are fed live fish from these ponds as well.
reGARding PET fish, i feed a mix of frozen fish/shrimp and pellets...some fish take one or the other or both. they are all healthy in the general sense, but the gars that take the pellets ARE in fact getting a better (more balanced and complete) diet than those that just take frozen.
--
--solomon
Flash in the pan? I'm 50+ years old, and this method of feeding fish is based on real science, and real world results, and has been utilized in aquaculture for decades. Not rhetorical nonsense about cheeseburgers etc. If you prefer to not expand your knowledge on this subject, that's certainly your prerogative, as I'm really not looking to convert anyone here. My reason for entering this discussion was simply to point out the flaw in yours & Connors logic.
E_a ....... thank you for adding some real world experience to this discussion. I was beginning to think that I had entered the twilight zone.
Lepisosteus platyrhincus;4360305; said:
Oh wow, talk about laying down the gauntlet! Probably unnecessary too. I'm sure he'll correct me if i'm wrong but i'm pretty sure he's implying that a variety of pellet that gives all the necessary nutritions is just as good as if not better then a variety of live/prep/pellet diet.
I'm basing that on him correcting me when i said we're all really just debating on which is better if someone were to be silly enough to lean solely one direction.
RD.;4360815; said:
Oh your still in the twilight zone dude and maybe about to cross to the other limits. Seems to happen often around here at times..... My advice, just let it be what it is and just leave it alone when Rod Sterling shows up and says "There is nothing in the dark that isn't there when the lights are on". .
You have made your point very well and in an excellent manner. Us with real life aquaculture experience also know what is the right position here and what is the real deal. Trying to explain rational fact to those that dwell in emotion though is generally just going to give you a migraine and them a woody.
xander;4359447; said:there are a number of guys on here who work extensively with gars outside of the forum...i believe you've just met peje.
as far as pellet diets go, i believe quite a bit of research goes into identifying imporant characteristics of artificial diets & identifying strategies that help gar larvae accept an artificial diet. If i'm not wrong, several hatcheries also use an artificial diet to accelerate the growth of their gar from juvenile to commercial size
anyone want these articles?
for the most part we encourage a varied diet. i personally go with whole fish (from the market), market shrimp & pellets. again, it's pretty much never a good idea to compare fish to humans. that kind of logic almost never works.
although there's nothing wrong with trying to give ones fish the best (read, most beneficial) available diet, i agree that some people take it too far in, as you put it, "feel(ing) compelled to feed their fish "just like it would eat in the wild." ". especially when they gauge the quality of the feed by what it is (store bought feeder, store bought mice, -or as one member memorably fed - KFC chicken
) instead of it's nurtitional value to the fish.
i'm greatly out of depth here especially with reGARds to the more "scientific' information, so feel free to point out any mistakes in whatever i've said. athough i'm hoping my reading of journal articles (do u guys call it that too?) will have paid off.
cheers,
alex
Huh, I always thought that gar would prefer Long John Silver's over KFC
. Of course then, my one longnose gar seemed to be checking out the burrito that I was eating while watching it the other day 
. And no, I didn't give it any of the burrito.But in all seriousness, your goal should be to feed your gar a complete and varied diet that's not based on just one food source in order to avoid deficiencies and such as previously mentioned.
Many of the posters here (E_americanus, xander, and Pejelarto just to name a few) have been working with gars for years, and some of them are even studying gars at a PhD level, so the best advice that I can offer is to listen to their advice.
Sol pretty much sums it up in a nutshell. Nice nutshell btw. Now that we've all bashed our heads.. why don't we be constructiuve and offer some suggestions for pellets that are good for gars, as well as other options.. Not just rosy red minnows. 
I personally feed my gar NLS pellets, Hikari Excel, and assorted feeders that are fed the same quality flakes as my tropicals are.
I personally feed my gar NLS pellets, Hikari Excel, and assorted feeders that are fed the same quality flakes as my tropicals are.
MonsterMinis;4361186; said:Sol pretty much sums it up in a nutshell. Nice nutshell btw. Now that we've all bashed our heads.. why don't we be constructiuve and offer some suggestions for pellets that are good for gars, as well as other options.. Not just rosy red minnows.
i think that's a great direction in which to take the discussion
i will admit that i am pretty intrigued by this new giant pellet that NLS has, and i am hoping to try it in the near future.
i will also admit that i am not a huge pellet-feeder when it comes to gars...we feed live at the lab, and i mainly feed frozen supplemented with pellets for the pet fish at home. the pellets i do feed are the "Xtreme" 9mm sinking pellets:
http://www.kensfish.com/xtreme-aquatic-foods.html
and hikari massivore. i can't really get away with feeding any floating sticks due to the large overflows in the big gar tank, so feed items must be sinking. again, i do plan on trying some other pellets (most likely when the current supply runs out), but also don't have much time or resources to spend on such an endeavor right now.
my two old Cubans, for the record, flat out refuse pellets...although they may accidentally ingest 1-2 every now and then during a feeding frenzy--
--solomon
