imagine a "grown-up" aquarium and the size of the fish

[Velvetgun]

Can I make a stupid observation?
(When you can't stand my questions anymore, say stop)
In aquarium shops we clearly only find fish in their initial growth size. I never see fish in their final size.
In my opinion, this is also the problem why so many people ignorantly buy goldfish, because they don't have a 15-year-old goldfish in front of them in the shop, otherwise they would never buy one for their 20-liter aquarium.
Even if you read the real dimensions, it's difficult to actually imagine the adult fish.
For example, I don't really like small fish, I like to observe every anatomical detail of theirs, I like to see their "expressions" and I really love seeing them as "single" fish, almost recognizable.
I was thinking for example of the endlers, they are very beautiful but I see them in the shop and they are really tiny and all their beauty in the photos disappears in this little body in the reality of the shopkeeper's tank.
I read that they can reach 3 centimeters, but I can't see them as 3 centimeters big.
Call it a lack of imagination, but I would really like to see them not magnified to the maximum in a photo but inside an aquarium in front of me.
This also for other fish, every now and then I happen to see some adult scalare, but the others are always all for imagination.
Maybe once or in other countries it is easier to go to homes and see "adult" aquariums, not here, so my aquarium in two years with the fish already grown is only hypothetical in my mind and based only on what is written in books.
Sorry as usual for my bad English, it is already difficult to make yourself understand what I mean on this subject

 

[Magnum Man]

in the old days, a lot of shops used to maintain a "display only tank" but they just don't fit most corporate shops business profile

 

[gwand]

My two local fish stores both have several 250 gallon display tanks, fresh and salt water. They are beautifully maintained. They are aspirational.

 

[Oldspartan]

My not so LFS has four that I can remember display tanks that very large.

The time after we went in after the shark fiasco, my fault entirely, and after looking at some fish I was handed a ruler and directed to a tank that was the approx size I planned to use. After laying the ruler against the side of the tank, the fish remained behind.

 

[Back in the fold]

in the old days, a lot of shops used to maintain a "display only tank" but they just don't fit most corporate shops business profile

There used to be a shop in my little town that had several large display aquarium’s and that was thirty years ago and that’s the last time one was ever seen here . I really miss seeing that . The local Cabela’s and Scheels have big aquariums but one is saltwater and the other is trout and walleye so who cares about that ?

 

[emeraldking]

Well, most fish will be sold as smaller specimens because of the price and it's easier to sell. Also people who weren't looking for a specific fish could get charmed by the small size and there's a good chance that they will buy the fish because of it's small size. Overhere in my country, I've only seen a few stores who have warned about the final size of a fish. Most stores won't give you that information, simply because they don't know it ot they are scared that a customer won't buy the fish. If a store calls itself a specialist, my opinion is that they should give you the proper information. But eventhough, a lot of those stores call themselves a specialist, most of them will not tell you about the final size.
There are also stores that tell the generalization that those fish will adapt to the size of the tank. Which is nonsense, of course. Yes, there are fish that do that but there are also lots of fish that will just grow further no matter the size of the tank.