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Please move this thread if neccesary I think there livebearers but i couldnt discide.


I'm interested in getting a needlefish for my tank. I was told by the petstore employee that it could only be feed live feeder fish. I asked him if i could get it to eat bloodworms shrimp stuff like that and He said it would only eat feeders. Ok, so i asked him how many and he said they could eat about 4 a day. Well i dont wanna got to the fishstore every 2days so I
just didnt buy it well. Im wundering if this is true and help would be greatly appreciated.
Any facts you have about the feel free to add them as well.

Was it a "needle fish" or a "half beak". I'm not familiar with a "needle fish", but a "half beak" will take some other foods than just feeder fish. Here is a link with some additional info on a "half beak."

http://www.fishprofiles.com/files/profiles/malayanhalfbeak.xml

Jim

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Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody. -- Mark Twain

Yes, it was label as needle fish and im sure it wasnt a half beak i will try to get the scientific name sometime

Please move this thread if neccesary I think there livebearers but i couldnt discide.


I'm interested in getting a needlefish for my tank. I was told by the petstore employee that it could only be feed live feeder fish. I asked him if i could get it to eat bloodworms shrimp stuff like that and He said it would only eat feeders. Ok, so i asked him how many and he said they could eat about 4 a day. Well i dont wanna got to the fishstore every 2days so I
just didnt buy it well. Im wundering if this is true and help would be greatly appreciated.
Any facts you have about the feel free to add them as well.

First of all, there are about a dozen species of needlefish-like/pike-like freshwater fish available in the North American aquarium hobby - of these, some are true North American gars (Lepisosteidae); others characins (of both Africa and the Neotropics); some livebearing (though relatively distant from the livebearing toothcarps [Poeciliidae] of the Americas) halfbeaks (the overwhelming majority of which are estuarine to marine), some (e.g. Belonesox spp.) true Poeciliids (and thus kin to guppies and the like), and others genuine oviparous needlefish (freshwater/brackish representatives of the slender marine gars).

I believe the fish you have in question is Xenentodon cancila (the "needle-nose gar" shown here).

X. cancila, the standard "freshwater needlefish" of the U.S. hobby, are somewhat skittish fish which do best in slightly brackish water; an adult needlefish will require a tank on the order of 75 gallons or so. They are difficult to wean off feeders, but, due to the risk of disease transmission and nutritive deficiency, it would be best to breed and gut-load guppies or the like for that purpose (as opposed to providing store-bought goldfish or rosy red minnows), in addition to periodically dangling freeze-dried or frozen krill with tweezers in the water (which will often elicit a positive response). Alternatively, one could attempt to flutter frozen silversides, cut to size, before one's specimen, or provide live ghost shrimp.


Last edited by Veneer at 04-May-2005 20:03

It may be this then.

http://www.giveusahome.co.uk/allpets/fish/needlefish.htm

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Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody. -- Mark Twain

Funny how the profile lists them as "semi-aggressive". I have never seen this species exhibit aggressive behavior, and in fact they are very shy and are intimidated by large, boisterous fish.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

No, it is definitly not a gar. It looks like the picture that old timer posted however it only shows the head pretty much. Im fairly sure it it that fish. If so can they be waned off feeders?

it is probably a sliver needle fish. i would guess it would eat blood worms.

They are definitely semi aggressive. I've personally seen specimens chase off pims far too large for them to eat.

The gars or the halfbeaks CoL? I have seen halfbeaks exhibit aggressive behavior, not only among themselves but to other species as well, but never the gars.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

As I said before:

"They are difficult to wean off feeders, but, due to the risk of disease transmission and nutritive deficiency, it would be best to breed and gut-load guppies or the like for that purpose (as opposed to providing store-bought goldfish or rosy red minnows), in addition to periodically dangling freeze-dried or frozen krill with tweezers in the water (which will often elicit a positive response). Alternatively, one could attempt to flutter frozen silversides, cut to size, before one's specimen, or provide live ghost shrimp."

I've seen a needlenose gar with another neednose gar hanging out of its mouth before...seems a little aggressive to me.

The gar. Halfbeaks are even worse, if you ask me.

yea i think any thing freeze dried should be fine it floats ...like freeze dried krill would be a good healthy idea!

I agree with CoL, they're definitely semi-aggressive, when I had them they would chase similar sized fish, but they did leave the big ones alone. If it was smaller, they would eat it.

Mine never showed any interest in ghost shrimp, however, rosies were a favorite.

I was never able to ween mine off live food. However, I have some ideas now that I didn't have then. First, give the tweezer idea a try, they may be a little skittish around that. Another idea, get a six inch length of fishing line, run it through a thoroughly soaked piece of krill or appropriately sized silver-side. Don't knot it or anything, you want the line to pull out easily. Drop it in the water, if it does not immediately attack, bounce it around and that should grab the needlenose's interest. Basically, when the fish grabs it, the line pulls out and the fish eats the food. Eventually, the food just hitting the surface is enough to illicit a response from the fish.

This practice is often used with the lurker puffers to train them off of feeders, and I would imagine that it could work with these guys. HTH

Last edited by puffer_archer at 06-May-2005 00:23