A fish was finally rescued from a backyard pond after it grew to be nearly six-feet long from its original size—when it could fit in the owners’ hand.

The sturgeon, nicknamed Stanley, was placed into an 11×10 foot garden pond by the Parker family when he was just six inches in length.

25 years later, homeowners Daniel and Jennie Parker were forced to pay a team of specialists to come and remove him after he grew to a massive 5’8″ long.

Fish expert Steve Aldridge, the owner of Gloucester Koi Rescue, traveled 40 miles to the home in in Bradford-on-Avon, England, to safely retrieve the overgrown Diamond Back Sturgeon.

“Stanley is the biggest sturgeon I have ever had to rescue,” said 51-year-old Aldridge. “The owners were under the impression he was about three to four feet long but he was much bigger than that.

The decades-old Diamond Back was transported to a private manor house and given a new lease of life in a much larger watery home.

“He has moved from a one-room apartment to a mansion,” joked the couple’s son, Tristan Parker, who split the cost of buying Stanley in 1999 for about £50 ($60) with his mom.

“We fed him loads and he just kept getting bigger and bigger.”

When the fish was smaller it would eat food from Tristan’s hand, but he hasn’t done that for “quite a while”, said Mrs. Parker.

In the end, the Koi rescue team didn’t even have a big enough box to transport him.

“I had to hand-build one to store him in for the journey.

“We had to stop four times on the journey to make sure he was okay,” recalled Aldridge.

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Jennie Parker says they are missing Stanley already.

“We talk about him all the time,” she mourned. “But it wasn’t fair to keep him in our pond as it was too small.

Sturgeons evolved millions of years ago with the dinosaurs but this species is now critically endangered in Europe.

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