Well, lot to digest there. I think I largely agree with all of it.What about this. If what I say is true and the hobby may shrink because less people will enter because of fish prices and if some leave because of the price of fish may have got to rich for them.
Will the demand on corals drop and the prices of coral come down?
Honestly I think this hurts the whole hobby including Forums, coral vendors, retailers, collectors, distributors, equipment manufacturers and the list goes on.
I think allot in the hobby also feel like well they will just come from elsewhere. Those places already have limits to.
Used to be bans happened one place a new place opened so people shrugged stuff off but now we are out of new places. Just like with live rock.
I think we hit the peak of the hobby now. Less diversity of fish and corals coming in some will lose interest.
Fish will have more diseases making it hard for some.
Coral prices are interesting. If demand declines then prices should also. Except, how many hobbies-turned-businesses would remain interested of they could only get $25 for a frag rather than $100 (numbers just illustration)? May well be that we'd lose a lot of supply also. I've long felt that its just a matter of time before wild collected corals become verboten. Then, we rely on the hobbyists to propagate supply. Not as problematic as the fish thing because coral easily propagate in reef tanks .... well, mostly easily.
I find myself wondering if a smaller addressable market is necessarily a bad thing. Is discouraging the casual reefer that keeps a tank for a year, kills a bunch of fish and coral, then moves on a problem. Yet, smaller addressable markets has a knock-on affect. Equipment manufacturers (the really innovative ones, that is) sell less stuff, have less $$ for innovation and more go belly up. I know you've been around for a while, as have I, but I have no desire to go back to the days when a company like Tunze (as great as they are) was about the only skimmer game in town.