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Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)

Hi,

John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.

I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.

With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.

I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.

If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.

I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.

I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.

Thank you
Darragh Sherwin

Silver & Stripped Gars

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22 Nov 2011 13:50 #1 by Ski (Alan McGee)
Hi guys,

I recently got a silver and a striped gar for my semi-agressive tank.

Both are around 4 inches at this stage and was just wondering does anyone have any experience with these?

The major question is if it is possible to get them off feeder fish and onto something like flakes, pellets or prawns? They won't even look at these at the moment.

Any info would be great

Thanks

Alan

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23 Nov 2011 09:36 #2 by Dan Dan (Danny Murphy)
If they are pike characin and not real gars I find the best way to get them off feeder is lance fish.

All the ones I kept I got onto pellet after a while.
What worked best for me was to get the big bags of frozen lance from seahorse.
I'm not sure if you can get them anywhere else. The bags are better than the packs cos the fish are whole and can be separated easily.

With my ones the trick was to find the right size lance fish for them at the start. Usually a very small one.
Then wiggle it with a tweezers or pliers just under the surface and lift it in and out a few times.
If your lucky the fish will strike it.
Or else what worked best for me was to drop the lance fish from a couple of inches above the water.
The splash will get the gars attention. If it doesn't strike it then leave the lance floating in the current.
It should get curious and try it if it is hungry enough.

These ways worked for me on the three out of three of those gars that I have kept.
The size of the lance I found to be the most important thing to get them started. And make sure the gar is hungry.
If they have other tank mates make sure there busy eating when your trying this.
After mine took whole lance they started taking most things that I dropped into the tank, once it made a splash they flew over and tried it.
They are great fish once you get the hard bit out of the way.

All the best.
Dan

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23 Nov 2011 10:08 #3 by Ski (Alan McGee)
Great thanks a lot for that Dan. Hate having to put in feeder fish because of the risk to the other fish.

Alan

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