Alligator gar in salt water?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
a fish occasionally swimming into salt water bodies, and taking one from fresh and dropping it in salt is totally different. I really don't think any gar should be kept in a salt tank IMHO.
 
it shouldnt
 
yes i see them when i kyak in the bays
 
Zoodiver;3259490; said:
I wanted to touch on the gator gar comment: Yes, you could keep them with bulls. Gator gar do very well as full marine animals. In fact they were the #1 bycatch I ran into when doing bull shark work in the Gulf of Mexico a few years back - showing that they are indeed swimming side by side in the wild.
Click to expand...
was just posted in a separate thread[about bullsharks]. after seeing matt's, phil's and solomon's posts, i'm pretty convinced.
 
are you serious there fresh water fish why would you want to put a gar in salt water yes their is salt in most lakes or river but its small amounts
 
The Downtown Aquarium in Houston has several large alligator gar in their restaurant tank with sharks, rays, groupers, skates, green morays, and a lot of other saltwater fish. I suspect they weren't just taken from the river and thrown in there, though. We've seen lots of them around the Chandeleur Islands off Lousiana as much as 20 miles offshore, in pure saltwater. The brackish and saltwater fish don't seem to grow as large or as fast as the fish from major rivers, which is part of the reason for the ongoing genetic work on the species. Some of the Texas Parks & Wildlife biologists believe there may be two or more strains or subspecies of alligator gar, or that there might at least be significant genetic diffrences between the coastal populations and the inland populations.

Cheers,



Don
(PagoJoe)
 
The San Diego Sea World had a bunch of gars with manitees and other saltwater animals, most around 5-7' I would assume they can do pretty well in salt water.
 
There must be a reason why gar does not thrive in the ocean. You do it at your own risk, or should I say at your gar's own risk.
 
We also kept large alligator gar (over 5') in the main shark tank in MN. As posted by others, many public aquariums have them in marine displays. We had to move ours to the freshwater display after they started creating problems. It took several months to let them acclimate them back to freshwater in a holding tank prior to moving them into the new FW display.


And as I posted in the other thread, we saw very high numbers of them in full saltwater while doing shark work.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
MonsterFishKeepers.com
Top Bottom