I bought mine for 15$... at 3" and he was the 3rd or 4th one we've tried to raise... they are extreamely hard to raise when small and worht every penny to buy larger. Tramonte you need to post us some pics! lol not to many of them around bigger then 18" but glad to be seeing more..
btw this is ime not a "mean" fish.. but a very territorial piscivore... anything and everything is food to these guys but i don't fear cleaning my tank.. i do however respect him. If you like oddball predetory fish and don't mind keeping it in it's own large tank... they are an amazing fish, my husband threatened to dis-own me last time i tried selling ours. It's actually quite a blast haveing people peer into his thickly planted tank.. and then going "wth is that?!" there are a few guys here that have commed them in JDM style set-ups but the over-all concensus seems to be house them singly. You can read my thread on "Bruce" to see what we went threw raising him from 3" to in the 20" range now.