Siniste J,
great to hear from you again.
i really agree on your points on size and look distortion from food, tank environment, it does really make a difference.
about the pond question. around 8-10 years ago, i gave a batch of 5 20++'s ST's to my friend put into his pond, there were 2 males and 3 females, they were raised in my 5 by 3 by 1.5 metres before going to the pond.
this pond that they were put it was 400 by 400 metres and two meters deep and a basin in the middle around 3 meters. this was his backyard house and Thai style ponds here don't have any substrate.
the pond has reared siamensis giant carp before so the pond reared fish before.
this is what was done to the pond before putting the fishes in:
- let water fill up naturally with rain water in the monsoon season.
-put in whole stumps of driftwood brought from dams, and put in cracked thai water collecting bowls, 1 by 1 meter size, 3 of them.
-released silver bettas, small grass carp, ghost shrimp, dwarf gouramis, and other small fishes 6 months prior to releasing the tigers.
-water change once a week, around 10% by pumping water out for gardening and pumping in new water from the water pond next it.
-pond filled with water lilies and thai typical plants.
we put these fishes in for about three full years with abundant natural food supply and no interference as it was a backyard pond.
we pumped the pond to almost dry to check out the fish, but nothing happened other than having four left (which we think it died) and growing bigger and thicker. this was a shame though as this was the first time i tried to breed them and thought that this method shouldn't be hard as it was a close to its natural habitat already. ( i went to bung borapetch to fish and observe the water and vegetation many times before). but this didn't succeed.
so are trying to find new ways nowadays but females are scare everywhere, especially full grown and well reared ones. males are still plenty.
