They are form ur lfs then most commonly Florida gar. That’s most available and bred now. Look thru enough pics and can guesstimate.
How to tell if you have a Spotted or Florida Gar
- Thread starter Josh's Fish
- Start date
Hi Chacass, yes those are both Floridas. They look like they could be farmed (ruling out Spotted right away) but too small to tell. Again, you're not really going to be getting true Spotted Gar in the trade unless you catch them yourself. As said there are a handful of specialist retailers that will sell the odd wild collected true Spotted Gar, but unfortunately even then it's not always guaranteed to be true.
Hybrid Gars populate a lot of rivers, more notably the Wolf-Fox River system. Over half the Gar there are hybrids of Longnose and Shortnose Gar, and they resemble real Spotted Gar more than Florida Gar do (image attached). To my knowledge Spotted Gar don't populate this river, but it helps illustrate how much hybrid and Florida Gar saturate the market.
REFERENCES:
http://www.nanfa.org/ac/gar-farming.pdf
http://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/home/Default.aspx?tabid=605&FishID=167
As this article has been gaining some traction in the gar groups on Facebook, I just want to update a couple of comments I made saying there aren't really any Spotted Gar in the hobby, and that they're not bred for the trade.
There are a very slim handful of them being bred for the aquarium trade (from Trinity River), although I am only aware of one batch myself.
Of course there are many wild ones in the hobby, especially now; although everything else in this article still applies, they are very rare and usually still from specialist imports. The most popular places I've seen true Spotted Gar (TSG) imports from are Trinity River and Sims Bayou.
Hao Peng and Giseok Jung keep some of the nicest examples of these types of TSG, so may be able to help more with obtaining them if you ask.
There are a very slim handful of them being bred for the aquarium trade (from Trinity River), although I am only aware of one batch myself.
Of course there are many wild ones in the hobby, especially now; although everything else in this article still applies, they are very rare and usually still from specialist imports. The most popular places I've seen true Spotted Gar (TSG) imports from are Trinity River and Sims Bayou.
Hao Peng and Giseok Jung keep some of the nicest examples of these types of TSG, so may be able to help more with obtaining them if you ask.
Likely a fl gar.