Cecil,
I did read your first post about rainbows achieving huge weights for varied reasons.
I guess for any animal to grow to its maximum potential it needs three things:
1. Age
2. Nutrition
3. Genetics
I believe many of us pond-meisters can satisfy the Nutrition part of this tri-ad. Its getting over the Age and Genetics hurdle that stumps most of us.
Condello and others are pushing the envelope on genetics (BG, RES and YP), which is interesting and fascinating to me.
Now, if we could just jump the Age barrier and produce fish that consistently that live longer than their counterparts. This is probably already being done to a certain degree with triploids, sterile females and X-breeds.
Also there needs to be a market for huge fish of a certain species.
Example: The fish rearing facility where I buy my rainbows (Buffalo Gap, SD) have absolutely no need or desire to produce fish that live longer. Their rationale is: Most of their fish go to Canada, are grown to two years of age, then butchered and sold as meat.
This is interesting stuff.
Ed
