What Gar to consider with my setup

[Twicksisted]

I was in my local fish shop today and saw that they had 5X 8" alligator gars and about 10X 5" spotted gars...

I have seen some video clips of these awesome looking beasts in community tanks with other large fish.

I did a bit of a search online and found the alligators grow to 300pounds!!! (how on earth can they sell these poor fish if they grow that big) and the spotted get to 1.2metres!

Anyways, I really love the look of these fish and was wondering which one I could accomodate... there must be a lot of species and hybrids that perhaps dont grow as big and would fit in my tank.

the setup I have is:

3X 8" oscars
1X 9" CK knife
1X 10" fire eel
1X 8" silver arowana
1X 7" leopard synodontis catfish
1X 5" Royal Plec
(Current growing tank is 55G... all the fish are growing rapidly and I dont expect to buy a 3ft gar... would buy something adequately sized at first)
I am also going to be adding a polypterus at a later stage to this collection once the 300G is up and running

Busy building a 300g tank for these babies... what Gar could I look at getting to put with my current collection and the size of the tank?
I will stop at this 300G (hopefully)

My 300G build link is here:
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=81646

Looking forward to your comments

 

[demjor19]

I was in my local fish shop today and saw that they had 5X 8" alligator gars and about 10X 5" spotted gars...

I have seen some video clips of these awesome looking beasts in community tanks with other large fish.

I did a bit of a search online and found the alligators grow to 300pounds!!! (how on earth can they sell these poor fish if they grow that big) and the spotted get to 1.2metres!

Anyways, I really love the look of these fish and was wondering which one I could accomodate... there must be a lot of species and hybrids that perhaps dont grow as big and would fit in my tank.

the setup I have is:


3X 8" oscars
1X 9" CK knife
1X 10" fire eel
1X 8" silver arowana
1X 7" leopard synodontis catfish
1X 5" Royal Plec
(Current growing tank is 55G... all the fish are growing rapidly and I dont expect to buy a 3ft gar... would buy something adequately sized at first)
I am also going to be adding a polypterus at a later stage to this collection once the 300G is up and running

Busy building a 300g tank for these babies... what Gar could I look at getting to put with my current collection and the size of the tank?
I will stop at this 300G (hopefully)

My 300G build link is here:
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=81646

Looking forward to your comments

these fish dont get nearly this size in captivity although the alligator gar does get very large, but there are some who are able to house them.

as for your 55 gallon tank...i would say you have more than enough fish in that tank... i would wait until the 300 is finished and running before you worry about a gar. when you do get one though i recommend getting a florida/spotted gar. they tend to be much more tankmate friendly than the alligator gar and stay much smaller. the florida/spotteds tend to max out around 2' in captivity...give or take a few inches.