Well my first thought is Bloomberg isn't going to be catering much to the "Lets find a good deal" crowd.
The first thing that really popped out to me (other than buying books and a MASNA membership) was the cost of the tank, $1200 for a 90g tank? Yikes, I'm guessing the Monterey tank is a higher end tank, no way I'd be in the hobby today if I had to plunk down $1200 for a tank that small.
Then we have $9 a pound for live rock, guess they're doing the whole 1 pound per gallon formula that stores love to keep pushing. Almost $2 a pound for live sand going for the "Bioactive" garbage.
The salt water is awesome.. you need two technicians to set things up, I'm not sure why they list salt twice the first $140 will last you through the year, than another $140 for additional salt to create saltwater throughout the year? I wonder if there wasn't a miscommunication by whomever wrote the article and the guys specing out a system.
$1500 for 2 18-inch Acan lighting system? Say whaaaa? A couple of the EcoTech Radions for that price!
The janitors thing always gets me too, hurray they'll have 3 starfish that'll die shortly and then the hermit crabs that are still left can eat their remains!
Corals... ehhh.. kind of a silly price tag to act, some prices seem like "frag sized" prices (Red Planet comes to mind) other prices sound like colony prices (orange cap? $200? Really?). I realize a lot of coral prices differ across the country vastly, but damn, I want to move somewhere were I can sell Xenia for $125 a bunch. Either way that's $2500 of the budget that can be easily fixed... go fake!!
The fish? ... seriously what more can be said, this whole sequence reminds me of what I used to do when I was a little kid with the Service Merchandise catalog, I'd just go through it adding up the cost of various items that would "look cool" and seeing how much all that cost, which is essentially what they're doing here. I can't even begin to think about the equipment side of things they list.
I'm shocked at everything listed here... however going by the references that were given it's not surprising the people who can spend this kind of money are those that LFS owners rely on to stay in business.
