Many years ago, before the underlying concepts of waste management in closed systems and how they affect growth rates in fish were understood, people who kept aquaria didn't really understand the need for performing water changes. They also noticed that fish tended to stop growing at an earlier age in smaller tanks, than they did in larger tanks. This lead to the erroneous assumption that the physical size (dimensions) of the tank determined the physical size of the fish. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Here's why:
All animals will reach the size they grow to as a function of their genetic potential and their ability to take advantage of that potential. To illustrate, let's look at people - even siblings grow up to be different heights because the genes that determine growth rate and final size are different for everyone. As long as one receives proper nutrition and exercise, and is kept in good health, one will reach the maximum height that one's genes will allow for. Raising a child in a bathroom, will not turn them into a midget, as long as they get proper diet and perform calisthenics/exercise, have access to good fresh air and water to breathe and drink, (though they may go mental from boredom ;p ), and aren't subject to re-breathing their own CO2, or re-consuming their own waste. Also to illustrate, if you try to keep an elephant in a 6'x6' cube from birth, it will not become a cube shaped elephant measuring 6'x6' as an adult. You will end up with a busted cube. ;p
If an Oscar is kept in a 20 gallon tank, that is then plumbed/piped into a 1000 reservoir system, it will reach a foot long in spite of the physical size of the tank-since it's wastes are not building up in the system to the point of interfering biologically with it's growth potential. Alternatively, you can achieve the same result by performing daily water changes. One of the main waste products that fish produce is an anti-growth hormone, the function of which is most likely to ensure that the largest fish from a group of offspring, get a better survival chance than their slower growing siblings, to help increase the percentage of faster growing (and therefore better suited for survival) offspring in successive generations. This is often observed in closed systems.