if you are getting a lima it will take a while for it to outgrow a 55 gal. That being said a little while is like 8 months to a year. A rtc would outgrow it in less than 4 or 5 months 6 if you're lucky. I would only feed blood worms, and krill when smaller 2-4 inches, and as they grow increase the size and amount of food they eat. You can start giving them cut shrimp after 4", and silversides. After they get to a foot feed whole shrimp, silversides, or other frozen fish from your grocery store. Don't over feed as they might get sick in the water, and foul it. Massive water changes are no fun. To be prepared as possible you'd need a 125 gal settup within a few months of getting your kitties. If you go with a lima, you'll probably be ok with a 125 gal for life, but with a rtc, you're looking at 8 months to a year before they hit the 18-24" mark! That means that you would need to start setting up a large indoor pond or gigantic tank for the rtc within 6 months of him going into the 125 gal. If you plan on housing in an aquarium go for the dimensions of 10'x4'x3', and pond 8' dia and 3' in height. For the lima again 125 would do for life, you could possibly get away with a 90 gal for just one or two of them, but you'd need massive filtration. Regardless, as they grow you will need massive filtration and massive weekly water changes. I currently do 30-40% water changes on all my catfish tanks, keeps me at 10 ppm on the nitrites. Just so that you know my baby rtc has grown from less than 2" to almost 5" in less than a month. Sometimes with limas it could take them a long time to get over the 8" mark, I have read where several members have had limas for a year and they are still at 8". I have 3 of them, 2 are at 10" and one is 14". One of the ones at 10" is only 5 months old, the other is a year old. My biggest is only 10 months old and 14". RTC can get brown blood desiese if your nitrites are too high. Most pims are delicate to ammonia, and can develope a number of desiese if ammonia is present. Most common are fin, and tail rot, ich, gill curl, popeye, and low oxygen absorbtion, gill desiese, ect. To avoid desiese I suggest putting 2 teaspoons of salt per 5 gals of water and keeping the temps above 80 f. Works well for me. Hope this helps.