I love RTCs dearly, keep a 27" beauty. But frankly there is LITTLE place for them in the hobby. I hate to say it but the majority of them need to be used as feeders while they're babies to keep them from suffering in the end. WHY, get a fish that you know you dont have room for? I got mine at a nice 4" about 2 years ago, it doubled in size within the first 2 months. I'll tell you a bit of my maintance schedule, its an 800G tank(12fter) with 4 pond filters each rated for a 1500G pond(I rinse the media of 1 every week) to keep the water from looking like crap I use 4*AquaMaster 600 powerfilters they are stuffed to the brim with quilt batting which must be rinsed daily. To keep water quality good I must do 2*200G waterchanges every week. They are high oxygen fish as well so I use 8 800gph powerheads to keep the surface moving 3 on each end and 1 on the front and 1 on the back. Of course I keep an aro and 2 pacu with it. If your filter should fail the fish would literally be living in its own waste, they are that messy. The minimum requirements for this fish are a 9ft long*3ft wide tank with no less than 2ft in height. I'm fairly certain the fish you are talking about is not this size but as I said before a well fed RTC grows rapidly. I don't have a clue what size tank you have but you said "i'll have to get rid of it in a year or so" I'm certain it isn't an ocean. If you like them so much keep them where they belong in Brazil. The only reason I keep one is because it was suffering in a crappy excuse for a LPS living in a 10G in its own waste, it was labeled as a "mystery catfish". Yeah the mystery would be in 6 months what the hell would the unsuspecting buyer do with it. I can't make your decision for you, but I hope this info helps.
