I understand what you're saying. Every time I mention some of my large fish in their growout tanks on any website but here I get flamed by someone.
In fact I've had a certain person tell me that if a baby fish that grows to a certain size is not housed in a tank that will fit them as an adult they're automatically stunted, I was like WTF?
I think part of it revolves around the mentality of certain websites. Newbies show up at the forum and see the regulars saying certain things, and instead of developing their own style of fishkeeping and going to several sources for information they decide to adopt the exact same style as the regs on that forum, and then spout the exact same misinformation. Because there is such a large amount of people that regularly frequent that forum flaming people, anyone that says "Hey, you dunno what you're talking about...." will get run off....
Could you imagine if I housed my 16 baby dats (all about 2 inches long and in a 55g) and 5 clown loaches (between 2-2 1/2 inches long, in the same tank) in a tank that would support their adult size?
I don't think I would even be able to feed them
They're going in a 6000 g tank eventually, so should I build that tank RIGHT NOW and throw them in there? According to some people, apparently. They'd have great water quality but probably starve to death. Well maybe not the clown loaches, they'd find anything on the bottom, but I'm pretty positive the dats would. How can you target feed fish if they're 1 inch long and in a massive tank? I already have a few small dats that would be severely stunted or starve to death if I could not feed food DIRECTLY to them.