i would agree with Madding IME with gars and captive growth stunting...LNG just seem to stunt quite a bit more. we are observing a lot more in terms of snout stunting when comparing to captive fishes these days too, and it may have surprising impacts on the rest of the fish. FLGs are definitely not great growers either, but i think if you stack up the growth potential for each species and compare to the captive stunting, it's much more drastic in LNG.
also, there is a much higher likelihood of getting "farmed" FLGs than LNGs...i think the farmed fish are not as good of growers by any means due to various captive rearing conditions and early stage factors. wild-caught FLGs i have received in the past have generally grown well to the 18" mark give or take...but no giants like we see in the wild (not that FLGs get huge anyway).
nice catch on the growth of your gars as well Kevin...with a more cyclical growth pattern/season, you can get more growth out of even older gars. this is what we stressed a while back in that FLG thread about growing them out huge...too fast of growth (without the cooling periods/breaks) early on will just eventually shunt energy toward reproductive growth and cap off a lot of max size potential (captive dynamics are obviously quite different from wild fish, but this is a combination of ecological principles and what we observe in captive vs wild fish).
anyway, good luck with your LNG, first species i ever kept, and i believe Richard's favorite species too...always been a fan!--
--solomon
