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Midget fish

Turkeysammich

Turkeysammich

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Hello.
Asking all the old school guys again. I’ve never ran across this. Do you think there is such a thing as midget fish ? I’ve had a blue throat trigger for about 8 years. He’s basically the same size as when I got him 3”. I know they get large. Just wondering if he’s a midget. I know tank size has a lot to do with it. He has room to grow. He just doesn’t.
 
Lots of fish routinely don’t grow to their full size in captivity. Tangs for example. I’ve heard people speculate as to a reason, including tank size, but I’ve never seen anything other than opinion presented. For example, what does plenty of tank space mean? 100 gallons? 1 million gallons? Even in large home tanks the fish that like to roam all over a bay foraging can’t really replicate that. Or nutrition? Who knows.

As far as your specific question about midget fish, if you actually mean dwarf as in a serious genetic abnormality like achondroplasia dwarfism, no. They would look different and act different. If you mean are some just small by normal variation like a short normal person, then I don’t see why not. But then you’d also have some bigger than normal (wild) ones in captivity too.
 
A question I have is will my 6-7 year old, 5” yellow tang ever reach full size (8”) living in a 5’x20”x22” tank? Or do they slow their growth due to space constraints? Or am I supposed to rehome it when it reaches a certain size and what size would that be?
 
Chromis said:
A question I have is will my 6-7 year old, 5” yellow tang ever reach full size (8”) living in a 5’x20”x22” tank? Or do they slow their growth due to space constraints? Or am I supposed to rehome it when it reaches a certain size and what size would that be?
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I bet It’s done growing, regardless of what you do. As far as I know tangs basically never reach full size growing up in home aquaria (wild caught adults are different). If you go snorkeling in Hawaii you’ll be shocked at the size difference with wild tangs vs ones grown up in our tanks.

5” vs 8” might not sound like a big difference, but remember since they grow in 3 dimensions, an 8” tang is about 4 times larger in mass than a 5” tang.
 
My 17 year old purple tank has been the same size for 15 years
I presume the rate of growth is drastically reduced after 3 years if not sooner
it went from a 120 to 180 to 200 gallon tanks
4’x2’, 6’x2’, 8’x2’
 
Something I was told about koi (not sure it’s true) is that they release hormones that will build up in a smaller volume and impede growth at a certain level. Made some sense to my mind.
 
This was a 450
Weekly 30% water changes, change 20lbs carbon
As Mike mentioned, the larger dominant fish excrete hormones that inhibit the growth of the subservient tank mates
These fish got “lake size”
 

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I would expect evolutionary pressures on hormones to be released to act on conspecifics in a lake with a well defined volume and very little local flow would not apply in the ocean.
 
Well, the dominant fish usually hogs all the food too. I wonder if it’s food availability - yea @JVU after seeing the fat, salad-plate sized yellow tangs in Hawaii I started thinking I was underfeeding mine!
 
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