Re: NANFA-- gar revisited

R. W. Wolff (choupiqu_at_wctc.net)
Thu, 18 Apr 2002 14:33:52 -0500

Daily feedings of injured bait fish would eleviate the gar preying on your
pet fish. It should learn to take them quickly when it associates you at
the waters edge with the injured fish. Then you can try floating pellets. If
other fish pick at them, the gar will try it too, thinking " those can't be
so bad to eat if those fish are trying". Once the gar starts taking
pelleted foods, then its easy to toss a handfull out every morning for it.
By doing the injured bait fish thing last year, not only did my gar get more
tame and fat, the larger species of sunfish like warmouth and green sunfish
became tamer and quite large, along with the bowfin as well. This was a
welcome relief, since the warmouth and bowfin both like to hide out during
the brightest hours of the day. My Alligator gar was the first to learn how
to eat pellets, the rest of the gar followed. The gator seen the shiners,
killis and sunfish picking at them and either inhaled some on accident, or
just started eating them.

Obtaining gar and bowfin is becoming more difficult with them being re
categorized as game fish, or pseudo gamefish in many states. Pet shops are
probably the best route to go. Searching on line for dealers could work,
but unless you are a wholesaler, its hard to deal with these people
directly. They just as soon not waste time trying to ship out one or two
fish.

Ray
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