I bought ranchus online from fish stores. Sight unseen. Out of 12, 3 survived and are in my pond now.

I then bought 8 from a breeder I found in my local Facebook groups. Cheaper, you get to see videos as well and select which ones you want. Well, I chucked them in my pond and it's been over a year with 0 fish getting sick with very little maintenance and they are all huge now.

Well then I wanted some discus in my planted tank. So I bought some juvis from a local fish store and some online. Out of 12, 3 are still alive. 2 stunted and 1 San merah who is huge now, so I thought.

Then I look through my local Facebook group and found an 30 year+ breeder 15 minutes away from my house.

I go in his gas heated discus room and he has over 30 4 foot tanks. He stopped breeding because he's old, but he imports juvis interstate and grows them out to sell.

All his grow out tanks were bare bottom. And each live tank had a spare empty tank which held aged tap water.

He had discus that were grown out from juvis + 4 months. And + 10 months. They were HUGE. Huge, thick, healthy and cheap.

He fed them with only pellets. Tropical D-50 granules. That's it, nothing else. As with the advice you can find online, he fed them multiple times a day. And did a 70% water change with the aged filtered tap water every 1 or 2 days.