Here's my two cents :wink: For starters coral species in the wild have very different environmental requirements and varying degrees of adaptability to changes in those conditions. Case in point are the sibling species Porites porites and Porites banneri which have similar apperances but very different depth ranges, P. porites is found from the surface to depths of 160 ft (very little light there) P. banneri is only found from 15' - 30'. This is further compounded by different species/varieties of symbiotic zooxanthellae with different environmental requirements. Now throw into the mix the evidence aquarists are developing variants acclimated to conditions very different from the wild ancestors, In support of this I point to the problems the Stienhart aquarium had when they restocked in 2008 after an extensive renovation and ended up with almost a 100% dieoff of donated colonies from aquarists and near 100% survival of wild specimans. While not an invertabrate species the problems with aquarium adapted strain of Calurpa taxifolia in the Mediterainian is another well documented example of aquarium adapted variants.
Some of the pricing is going to be driven by what the current fad is. Some of it is going to be dictated by how fast a coral (or color variant of a species) grows, ie a fast growing coral is going to drop in price quickly as supply meets then exceeds demand (Xenia is a good example of this, when I first started it was considered impossible to keep). A slow growing coral or color variant will maintain it's price longer.
