Rainbow Fish ?

[Japola44]

So i finnaly got to teh lfs by my school yesterday, and i was a little disapointed by their fresh water selection. They had some really pretty salt water fish but back to my point. They had a bunch of Rainbow Fish which i am guessing were fry due to there size. They were only about 1" long and had no color what so ever. They just looked like a little silver fish.
No I was planning on getting some for my new 55 gal, but they need to be big enough to not let my bichir or knife fish eat them. So how fast do they grow? I have my 20 gal tank they can grow in, but i dont want them to be growing big enough for 2 years yah know. Also, do they only get color until after a certain point or was the kind at the lfs a different than what i am thinking?

 

[crazycat]

did the lfs say what kind of rainbow fish they were?

 

[Apocalypse_Gold]

It would be very hard to know what type of rainbow you were getting, and I have seen a lot of 1 inch fish completely mislabeled, but if they were cheap, you could roll the dice and maybe get some cool ones. Most reach maturity within a year.

 

[RoK]

Rainbows seem to grow pretty quickly and color up nicely as they get older. Most do not get any longer than 6", many much smaller. The bichir will probably get big enough to eat them.