A friend for my Spoted Gar

1

15_gallon_jim

Registered Member
Oct 28, 2005
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Hello,

I have a lovely spotted gar but unfortunately he is on the agressive side. I feed him small guppies quite often but every now and again I find him stalking and nipping at my tiger barb. Does anyone know what type of fish Gar's get along with?
I was also reading online that you can train a Gar to eat dead food. I have tried but with no luck. If anyone can help me with that as well I would definately appreciate it. Maybe if I ween the little guy off of live food he will leave the other fish alone.

Cheers,

Jim
 
15_gallon_jim said:
Hello,

I have a lovely spotted gar but unfortunately he is on the agressive side. I feed him small guppies quite often but every now and again I find him stalking and nipping at my tiger barb. Does anyone know what type of fish Gar's get along with?
I was also reading online that you can train a Gar to eat dead food. I have tried but with no luck. If anyone can help me with that as well I would definately appreciate it. Maybe if I ween the little guy off of live food he will leave the other fish alone.

Cheers,

Jim
Click to expand...

A few preliminary questions:

What size tank is this? How long has it been running? What other fish are in with your gar? How large is it? Are you aware of its projected adult size?

At any rate, it's unlikely that such predatory instincts can be conditioned out of your fish.
 
I was also reading online that you can train a Gar to eat dead food

what you SHOULD have read online is that a spotted gar grows to 3 feet and along the way, can and will eat EVERY OTHER FISH in a tank with it. this is a high order PREDATOR and naturally eats other fish.

unless you have a 500 gallon tank, release this fish back to the wild where it came from. such a fish has absolutely NO business in anyones home aquarium.
 
DO NOT release it into the wild. A.) It may very well not be native to your area and B.) it has been with aquarium fish and the potential is there that it is harboring a disease that could wipe out a good portion of a native population of fish.
 
unless he's not in the united states, the spotted gar is native to all states. moreover it's not a tropical fish and will not carry parasites or pathogens to cold water native fish.

i agree with you that releasing fish from tropical tanks into native waters is a very bad idea. in this case however, i see no other hope for a fish that grows to three feet, is a high order predator, cannot possibly survive in a home aquarium smaller than 500 gallons (actually a larger tank is preferable) and should not be sold in the aquarium trade in the first place.
 
The spotted gar is NOT native to all states. And, there are many parasites and bacterial infections that will happily targot cold or warm water fish. The water temperature may slow the spread, but it will not stop it.

Releasing fish into the wild, under any circumstances, is abhorrent, and illegal. Euthanize the fish--it's death, versus the destruction of an ecosystem, is a small price to pay.
 
not found in all states? well, that will be news to the spotted gars found from Canada to Mexico and from North Carolina to California. ;) which states do not have this fish?

as far as pathogens/parasites released to the environment ... take ich for example. the ich parasites occur naturally in all waters, and it is likely that all fishes carry a low-level infection. lethal occurrences of ich in the wild are rare, because of the low probability of any single parasite finding a suitable host during its brief swimming stage. i think the same holds true for other common aquarium pathogens.

i really do agree with you on releasing fish to the environment. it's generally an unacceptable practice. in this case, the fish in question is going to die in any environment other than some native waters and releasing it at least gives it a chance. releasing "native" fish back to "native" waters seems ok to me.

your results may differ.
 
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