Spotted or just another florida?

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100 time more than a Florida gar? it isn't matter if it is a spotted gar or not, it should not be more expensive than FLG. BTW there is not really a safe way to be sure it is a spotted or Florida without a DNA test.
 
If the lfs knew the initial collection data you might have a better guess. Couple years back some wild collected spotteds made their way to asia. Most of what gets labelled as spotted is actually floridas though.
 
What are they asking? I'd buy it, if it were Florida or Spotted. Great looking gar.
 
This http://www.theaquariumwiki.com/Lepisosteus_oculatus says:

Identification
An elongate slender fish with a long pointed snout and dorsal fin set way back towards the rounded caudal fin. The flanks and fins of this fish have large brown spots on a silver base colour.
This species of gar rarely exceeds 91cm (35.8"), and the average length is 76cm (29.9"). Its body is cylindrical and often mistaken for a log lying in shallow waters. This gar is covered with hard, diamond-shaped ganoid scales. Their bodies are spotted, including the top of the head and the fins. Lepisosteus oculatus is often mistaken for the Florida gar, Lepisosteus platyrhincus; the two can be distinguished by the distance from the eye to the gill cover. In the spotted gar, this distance is greater than two-thirds the snout length, while this distance in the Florida gar is less than two-thirds.

Bold underlined is mine. IIRC though, these gars are hybridized by people and they too hybridize in the wild as their native ranges / areas overlap. IDK how prevalent the hybrids are.

I have a similar problem - I bought a (nominally) spotted gar from Shark Aquarium about half a year ago. It's about 10" now. I've been lazy to get a good photo of the head to do the measurement.
 
thebiggerthebetter said:
This http://www.theaquariumwiki.com/Lepisosteus_oculatus says:

Identification
An elongate slender fish with a long pointed snout and dorsal fin set way back towards the rounded caudal fin. The flanks and fins of this fish have large brown spots on a silver base colour.
This species of gar rarely exceeds 91cm (35.8"), and the average length is 76cm (29.9"). Its body is cylindrical and often mistaken for a log lying in shallow waters. This gar is covered with hard, diamond-shaped ganoid scales. Their bodies are spotted, including the top of the head and the fins. Lepisosteus oculatus is often mistaken for the Florida gar, Lepisosteus platyrhincus; the two can be distinguished by the distance from the eye to the gill cover. In the spotted gar, this distance is greater than two-thirds the snout length, while this distance in the Florida gar is less than two-thirds.

Bold underlined is mine. IIRC though, these gars are hybridized by people and they too hybridize in the wild as their native ranges / areas overlap. IDK how prevalent the hybrids are.

I have a similar problem - I bought a (nominally) spotted gar from Shark Aquarium about half a year ago. It's about 10" now. I've been lazy to get a good photo of the head to do the measurement.
Click to expand...
that distance between the eye and gill thing had been proven to be fail. And their native ranges do not overlap.
 
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotted_gar says Spotted occur in small part of FL The spotted gar is native to North America and its current range is from southern Ontario to the west from the Nueces River in Texas east to the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico and southeast to the lower Apalachicola River in Florida.

But, Hung, you appear right. MFK and other sites (for example this was useful to me http://www.oscarfishlover.com/forum/74-gars/265468-spotted-or-florida-gar-what-s-the-difference ) state the 2/3rd thing is useless with aquarium gars.
 
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