But they are *not* being mass produced by farms. Most of these are through smaller breeders still. It has literally only been in the hobby breeding within the last recent years.
My understanding is that it breeds somewhat easily, as far as corydoras go, but it's also not prolific like aenea or paleatum are. It is still only in small numbers.
CW111, hephaestus, CW127, and pantanalensis are among the most expensive corydoras at the moment, due to the fact that, no, they are not easily obtained and are not being mass produced like you are claiming here. Many are still barely leaving the hands of private collectors or are very very seasonally collected wild.
Only Canadian listing here for hephaestus. Which is still proving to be a prolific breeder at least, so I got hope of a cheaper bunch eventually lol
The catfish community will pay these prices for these fish. Both corydoras and plecos. Many take a long time to reach breeding age, are slow growing, and don't produce as many fry as praecox rainbowfish do, so of course their prices are going to be much higher than $50 a fish at first for the top rarities. And many corydoras can be difficult to breed. Most of the common ones are relatively easy, but some of the rarer ones take dry season/wet season conditioning, messing with parameters, and perhaps sacrificing a limb or your firstborn to convince them to maybe decide to spawn, and still not spawn for the entire time someone has them.
They're more work to spawn in good numbers than egg scatterer fish are. They require a little more work with water changes and a little more convincing than just throwing a pair in a tank full of spawning mops like most rainbows are quite content with. They require more hands on work to get them to spawn.
Eques have been in the hobby for several years, but they still have a relatively high price. Why? They're only caught from one area in any decent number seasonally, and they're extremely difficult to breed among the corydoras species.
Now, you get me some gastrodermus gracilis available, I'd happily drop an obscene amount per fish for them
my husband, not so much. He already wanted to cry over the eques price paid, and they were a gift from him lol