I like raising them from really small myself, but they are really fragile it seems when that small. I had 2 rtc just last week. One I had for 7 weeks and is over 9" long got him at almost 2", but not quite. The other I got at 1.5" and one of my tetras bit off his gill cover. He lived for another week, but just sat in the air tubing bubbles til he died a few days ago. Really sux, cause they are hard to get here and I have to special order all my catfish. LFS is supposed to have some marble cats comming in for me, but I never know when they will get them. They only get shipments once a month.