It's 100% believable. I've worked in a pet shop selling marine animals. The markup is crazy. But keeping a couple thousand gallons of saltwater inhabitable for livestock isn't cheap.
Math is your friend when in business and if you can sell $45k per month at a 300% muf with rent and utilities less than $3k per month and a third of your time is spent doing service calls and installs at 120 hours per week then you're not charging enough.
It's not an Obama fault. It's not regulation. It's the owner and his model. And, to the person's post who made the claim that nobody, but him understands that that is what it takes to run a small business, my response is simple.
It does not take 120 hours to make a living in a small retail business. If it does, you're doing it wrong.