As long as sticks and other hard corals remain the fad I don't see the popularity of Nems rising back up to where they have been previously. The bigger sites like this and RC and nano get, the more and more people learn about how much is actually needed to have them and keep them from destroying the rest of your tank.
I've not done any kind of crazy market analysis or anything that would qualify me as an expert, but I can see the high end BTA market working out about like the housing market did. People buy them because they are different, then they walk, then they get passed on to the next guy, one more reefer out of the Nem game so on and so forth until the nem is placed in a tank that can't house it and perishes or it perishes in shipping. Is the rate of new reefers interested in high end nems enough to make up for that guy who won't have one in his reef again? Hard to say, but I wouldn't think so.
Maybe with multiple tank homes becoming more and more the norm for hobbyists and with a new Disney Nemo moving (Finding Dori) coming out next year, people will start to fall in love with them again. I love sticks and softies and we have some absolutely stunning tank pictures floating around this site, but very rarely do you catch one with a Nem anywhere other then on the sand, if you catch one at all.
