Woke up this morning and noticed I was one fish shy in my 240. It was my alligator gar. Frantically I did a ground search and found him bone dry by the right side of my tank next to the wall motionless! Quickly I picked him up and put him in my tank next to the water outlet and rocked him back and forth. I noticed one gill was moving so I had some hope but he did not look good. His gills were all bloody and his right eye was pretty messed up from hitting the walll all night long! After 5-10 minutes both gills were working but no movement. After about 30 minutes he started moving his tail and would try to swim a little but would just sink to the bottom and roll over. I feared his swim bladder was junk, but I did not give up. I kept him close to the top of the water as gars need to take air from the surface. I finally got him to do it on his own. About 10 more minutes of this and he started moving all his fins and then swam off on his own and righted himself and his swim bladder was working! Looks like he might end up blind in one eye but it looks like he is going to make it! I am very glad because I sold my other gar and this was my only one left. I saw my heater in the right corner tank loose from it's holder and it looks like the gar jumped out of the small hole in the back corner of the tank- most acrylic tanks have them. It is a 1 in a million chance of this happening because I have the heater blocking the hole and the gar would have to literally swim perfectly vertical and shoot out like a rocket and gars just don't swim like that. Plus the hole is just slightly larger than the gars body width. Here are some pics. The first is the gar right after he started swimming on his own and the second is the hole he jumped out of.
