Thumbs up, thank you Eric! I wonder if the real big ones are too rare / overfished.

Great story! I call them Armageddon fish.

Glad to see you followed through, Xeno. I am learning here too. 16" is the biggest rita in captivity I've heard of. As Balaji, I've never seen one in captivity break a foot but then they are very, very exceedingly seldom kept and moreover almost never kept long term. BTW lovely signature, Balaj...

I'm far from knowing synos well. FWIW it looks like a hybrid to my eye too but the syno genus grew tremendously over the last decade and I don't know most of the newly added genuine species. If it were a hybrid, I think it'd be a variation on a theme of hybrid #1 https://www.planetcatfish.com/common...