I think something else that people don't realize about those things is how fast they grow...... they are encrusting corals from what I've read and they grow super fast ... almost as fast as GSP apparently.
Seriously, the guy who runs my
LFS put it best when he gave me the one he gave me and I quote....."The only reason anything is expensive is because people wil pay for it, that's why things cost what they do. lok at a picture of a reef... do you ever really see fields of LSP corals like you so
SPS corals???? No, you don't hardly ever see pictures of them in the wild in all those magazines... so what does that tell me??? It tells me that their are a lot more
SPS corals than anything else, so why are they so expensive? BECAUSE PEOPLE WILL PAY FOR THEM, no other reason... why do people sell bleached out ricordia and say it;s a rare color morph when really it's about to die? because people want to feel special about the stuff they buy. People like
SPS corals co much because of all the crap you need to keep them ...
MH lighting, a skimmer that's way to big for your tank, you have to do a tone of calcium dosing, and then you probably are going to wind up needing a chiller and that's not even all you need........ that's what makes stuff "hard to keep" all the stuff you have to buy to keep it. It's just like people BUYING gsp... yeah I sell it but they could ask you for a piece out of your tank, you'd give it to them because it grows like kudzoo and in 3 months they would have saved 39.99. Here take this acan out of my store so none one tries to come in here and tell me what's what like there *beep* doesn't stink. Oh yeah, if it lives you owe me 900 dollars" then he laughed....
I'm telling you, the collectors make probably NOTHING and they do the hardest job. It's retailers who jack prices up.
markup on ALL coral is 100%
fish is slightly less,
and with "RARE" stuff it's like a 1,000% markup.