nmonks
A stroke of the brush does not guarantee art from
Hi CFC,
You are quite right to mention Acestrorhynchus spp. It was neglectful of me not to mention them.
From my own personal experience, I'd say that in much of the US the freshwater barracuda does appear to be Ctenolucius, at least when it turns up in generic pet shops. It is alternatively called the "rocket gar" or "hujeta". In so far as the common name "tropical gar" has an official meaning, it properly applies to Atractosteus tropicus, a lepisosteid gar from tropical North America and the Caribbean. That's the name under which it is listed, for example, on Fishbase. But as I've mentioned here before, there are no "true" common names for fish, so it's all a matter of opinion, not science, which common name should go with which fish!
For what it's worth, if you google each genus name with the word barracuda as well, you get roughly the same number of hits. So yet again, this is an instance where the advanced hobbyist (= anyone considering these fish) should be using the scientific names and taking care to positively identify the fish in the pet shop before purchase. If you aren't able to identify the fish on sale, and you can't tell the difference between these genera (and any others that might be confused with them) you almost certainly shouldn't be keeping these fish.
Cheers, Neale
You are quite right to mention Acestrorhynchus spp. It was neglectful of me not to mention them.
From my own personal experience, I'd say that in much of the US the freshwater barracuda does appear to be Ctenolucius, at least when it turns up in generic pet shops. It is alternatively called the "rocket gar" or "hujeta". In so far as the common name "tropical gar" has an official meaning, it properly applies to Atractosteus tropicus, a lepisosteid gar from tropical North America and the Caribbean. That's the name under which it is listed, for example, on Fishbase. But as I've mentioned here before, there are no "true" common names for fish, so it's all a matter of opinion, not science, which common name should go with which fish!
For what it's worth, if you google each genus name with the word barracuda as well, you get roughly the same number of hits. So yet again, this is an instance where the advanced hobbyist (= anyone considering these fish) should be using the scientific names and taking care to positively identify the fish in the pet shop before purchase. If you aren't able to identify the fish on sale, and you can't tell the difference between these genera (and any others that might be confused with them) you almost certainly shouldn't be keeping these fish.
Cheers, Neale
