Why don´t you care about the growth-curves? This is essential to understand the maximum sizes of animal. Even if an animal growns nearly its entire life, this doen´s matter if the growth at older ages is only minimal. Arapaimas are known to reach very big sizes within a very short time, but of course this initial massive growth doesn´t stay for their whole lifes. There are many examples of animals like fish, amphibians and reptiles, which lived very long, and where the growth was dated over many years or even decades. It is for example known that some very large crocodiles in captivity reached sometimes huge sizes in about 20 years or so, but even decades later there was not a single metre more. If the additional growth per year is only some centimetres, it doesn´t matter when an animal grows for its whole life. Furthermore every futher centimetre needs more energy to grow, because animals don´t only grow in length, but in three dimensions. To double the length you have to increase the weight for 700 % at least.
And the fishing ponds in Asia or elsewhere may have a denser population of fish, but still they have often much more food, especially compared to the comparably poor rainforest-rivers of South America.
And what you still don´t understand is that this stupid stories of 4-5m arapaimas comes only from one single second hand report. There were never anywhere reports of arapaimas of this size. You also don´t see the fact that there is still a lot of room without any fishing and pollution, and where arapaimas can life and grow without being stressed. In regions without fishery the adult size is on average about 2m. Arapaimas are not like sturgeons which are nearly everywhere highly overfished, but only regionally, so there are still a lot of them which can reach their maximum sizes in the wild. But still from this regions we have NO specimens reaching only 3m. I don´t understand why you are so ignorant towards this arguments and facts.
And the fishing ponds in Asia or elsewhere may have a denser population of fish, but still they have often much more food, especially compared to the comparably poor rainforest-rivers of South America.
And what you still don´t understand is that this stupid stories of 4-5m arapaimas comes only from one single second hand report. There were never anywhere reports of arapaimas of this size. You also don´t see the fact that there is still a lot of room without any fishing and pollution, and where arapaimas can life and grow without being stressed. In regions without fishery the adult size is on average about 2m. Arapaimas are not like sturgeons which are nearly everywhere highly overfished, but only regionally, so there are still a lot of them which can reach their maximum sizes in the wild. But still from this regions we have NO specimens reaching only 3m. I don´t understand why you are so ignorant towards this arguments and facts.
