![]() With locality data one can determine if the fish is a SPG vs FLG, but without that, there are only a few nuanced characteristics to look for (for those of us who have seen many specimens of each), and even those are not 100% reliable (one way is, but it's not safe for captive fish - dead fish, yes). Mainly because not many are interested in them, and Florida Gars, nearly identical in appearance, are readily available. You are correct, true Spotted Gars are actually quite rare in the hobby. I look forward to checking out your video wanted to address the Spotted vs Florida Gar and Tropical Gar - "common vs. The tropicals are often hungry and hence they are beggars, that's for sure. The 4 tropicals have been fed only pellets before I got them, I surmise, because to this day they seek out pellets far better and are slow in feeding on bait fish, something I have never been met with before having kept long term alligator, FL, and long-nose gars in prior life. ![]() They don't care for strong current, furniture, and too small a tank width for comfortable turnarounds. Until a month ago, they all have been in a 240 gal now in 4500 gal, much more relaxed, less skittish. I am not so sure it sees out of its right eye or how well it sees. The latest bout started a few months back and its left eye looks ill and perhaps blind now. The mexican has also been the sickly one from the beginning and has gone through several bouts of eye-affecting illnesses even before the incident with the apurensis catfish. The mexican gar struggles to swallow whole bait fish because of it, so it's still the smallest at ~12" today. I thought it'd not make it but it did and the pouch grew back but doesn't look right, as you will see from the video below if you look carefully - the mexican gar is in the first frames of the video. The skin was burned by stomach acid and fell off little by little and the jaw was just a pair of bones with nothing in between them. On my oversight, its head spent some time in a tummy of an apurensis catfish tank mate, the gar was found impossible to swallow and was spit out and the catfish promptly removed, but the gar lost its skin pouch on the lower jaw altogether. They are only ~14"-15" today after 1.5 years. The 3 common tropical gars have been feeding ok but growing very slowly. ![]() They are clumsy, slow, both slow-moving and slow-witted. The tropicals that I got are kind of ill-suited for captive life. This was my first experience with the tropical gars. The tropicals were about 9"-10", the mexican smaller, ~7" and the florida was small, ~4". IIRC, there is also an issue of (man-made or natural or both?) hybridization that complicates this further. Location of capture is said to be the most reliable indicator because their ranges do not overlap that much (?). The gill to eye distance described in a science article is said to have been proven unreliable in the ID, or so some experienced MFK-ers are saying. On top of being largely unavailable, they appear to be immensely hard to tell from FL gar, especially at smaller sizes. I've never had a real spotted gar and I am still looking. $200 for 3 tropicals (picked up the mexican one was a freebie) and $40 before shipping for the FL gar. I got 5 gars in Aug-Sept 2015, 4 tropical (three common and one mexican variety, I was told by the vendor) from Primo Aquatics in Orlando, and 1 spotted gar from Shark Aquarium's George Fear that I believe turned out to be, unfortunately, the very common florida gar.
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