Mine was not too skinny when I got it. I QT'ed it with live rock, but smeared flake onto bits of lr to keep the nutrition up.
Economics cont. - I don't live in the US, and the average wage of Norway is approx twice that of AUS(, even though the AUS average is now over 50000 AUS $, it's really high here.) However I pay tax at top rate of 49%, and everything except housing and electricity is ludicrously expensive, i.e. I pay over 6 USD for a gallon of petrol so it balances buying power. So for me 40 USD for a fish is very approx the same as AUS 20D for you - it's the same as say 2 music CD's.
What it does mean is that when I visited Aus a couple of years ago, like anywhere else in the world ouside of NW Europe and Japan, it was really, really cheap, the same as if you visited Thailand for example.