Thanks for that link..I see they do lose a lot of the coloration once they get some size. One thing I didn't see was much talk about the growth rate of these.Do you know if they grow fast like the achara or the shovelnose? Just hope they don't have the same growth as the redtail hybrids..they are ridiculous
These are made for food in SA and grow very quickly, on par with the farmed RTC, TSN, and TSNxRTC. However, my current thinking is that we ~ exclusively get culls from all four productions:
-- RTC
-- TSN
-- TSNxRTC
-- TSNxLei
That is we get the waste from the farms - the runts and dinks that drew the short stick and received poor genetics. They used to be disposed of but now a portion of them found a new market in our trade.
Although there is a lot of scatter in the data reported by the MFK'ers and a plethora of other factors but in general these fish appear to
-- grow 2-3x slower
-- max out at 2x smaller sizes
-- live 2x-5x shorter
-- often possess structural defects
versus their wild kin and their properly-performing "keepers" at the farms.
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Anyhooo... sorry about the long and perhaps unsolicited intro but back to TSNxLei. I've grown 3-4 of them. On average 1'-1.5' in one year, 2' in 2 years. No more than 2.5' IME and that of others but my oldest is only ~5-6 years old and is 2'-2.5' currently, probably close to 28".