red finned longnose

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My longnose gars actually develop golden yellow shine when I feed it with smelt and my Florida gar actually have a slight orange hue on the tail and slight golden yellow at the top of the body starting from the head. Same thing with my shortnose gars but my shortnose gars are still a baby so I'm not sure if the orange color on the fins will stay. If I stop feeding them smelts in a month they turn back to just silvery color.
 
King-eL;4028317; said:
My longnose gars actually develop golden yellow shine when I feed it with smelt and my Florida gar actually have a slight orange hue on the tail and slight golden yellow at the top of the body starting from the head. Same thing with my shortnose gars but my shortnose gars are still a baby so I'm not sure if the orange color on the fins will stay. If I stop feeding them smelts in a month they turn back to just silvery color.
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that's just taking advantage of the genetic predisposition to develop those colors based on utilizing what's in the food...just as i was saying in the earlier post. if you feed color-enhancing type foods to many fishes, they will often develop better color than if they are fed low-diversity and/or low-color-enhancing compound foods.--
--solomon
 
E_americanus;4028303; said:
to the OP -

in short, some longnose gars (and shortnose and spotteds for that matter) have more colorful fins than others. gars are quite variable in their pattern, and some do have brighter red/orange coloration...and note we are talking about coloration, not the blood streaks from stress as Spatula was referring to (which does happen as well).



i know for a fact that the gar in the second color did have more orange/reddish fins and that it's not an artifact of flash because i didn't use flash when i took that photo many years ago :)

i'll have to dig up some other examples, but i've kept (and richard has kept even more) longnoses over the years and the pattern in fins is tremendously variable (relatively speaking).

certain foods with carotenoids (krill, various pellets, etc) will help with coloration, but if the fish doesn't have the genetic make-up to develop the really bright pattern, you won't see it expressed as much as in some of the more unique individuals--
--solomon
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in response to spatula's question.
 
Fin coloration in longnosed can be very locality specific and is highly variable. Diet most definitely has a bit of a part in this but specific genetics is what really brings it out. I've never seen a fish in this area with Red or orange fins they are always yellow. Feeding them a high carotenoid diet did not change that much it just made the yellow brighter. On the other hand I have had a few fish from different southern populations that showed a reddish tint and this would brighten significantly with diet high in carotenoids.
 
Bennlfer;4028735; said:
Can Floridas get redder tails too?
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Maybe but I've not known of this for them particularly. I would not discount it as possible but I've never seen anything like this significant in them. Not like what can show in a Longnosed, Spotted or Shortnosed in regards to Orange or reddish fin coloration.
 
Perun;4028833; said:
Not like what can show in a Longnosed, Spotted or Shortnosed in regards to Orange or reddish fin coloration.
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Would it be safe to put Alligator Gars in this category as well? Allot of the Gator Gars I see online from Texas are almost a silver color with red/pink fins.
Then again a majority of those are ones that have been caught fishing.
They almost look like a totally different species of Gator Gar because they are more silver than dark brown/olive.
 
my gars all have a solid, gold hue all round...diet is nothing special...

:P
 
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