Reptile & Amphibian Forums

After reading rather a lot of posts here it seems that CWD's grow quickly. I have my 2 (separated since they were young as one didn't much like the other) in a 27gal and 33gal respectively. Had them about 8 months and they are roughly 5" long nose to vent, were about 2.5" when I got them. Do they grow more slowly in a smaller environment as a rule? They seem healthy and eat well. In the process of building a proper sized enclosure for them (hoping the 2 will get along with a larger space for territories).
6month old Beardie - Drakul
9 month old CWD - Elmer studying a silkworm
Elmer again, practicing levitation
9 month old CWD - Perkins
6 month old HMD - Sionnach (pronounced Shayna)

How much do they eat and what? Generally speaking, the more you feed them the faster they will grow. The size of the environment won't change their growth but it will cause developmental problems as they grow. If they can't move around as much they will lose circulation to their tail and you will see the tails becoming dead and stiff at the ends. Also, they will loose full range off motion of their limbs. I know this becuase I once rescued an iguana that was raised to adult size in a twenty gallon tank and I worked in petstores long enough to see the results of this misconception on various herps. The size of a fish is limited by its environment becuase of hormones that build up it the water. There isn't a feed back system like that with herps.

Actually some fish easily outgrow their environment, with similar stunting to their growth and other problems (I keep 10 tanks of varying species of fish in addition to herps).

Lovely pictures, Shahin.

It is possible for a fish to out grow its environment, however they do have feed back system with pheromones released into the water as these pheromones build up, growth slows down. frequent water changes will of course lower the amount of pheromones and allow your fish to grow bigger. Now, this also depends on the natural adult size of the fish in question, an oscar in a 2 gallon tank is going to have problems no matter what, but a neon will be just fine, but its unlikely that it would grow to the two inches plus that he could get in a 500 gallon tank. I am always amazed at how big common aquarium fish are in the large tanks at the national zoo or the baltimore aquarium. When it comes to fish, size does matter, with herps, the tank or cage size won't have any effect on growth.