They're hardly excuses, importers and exporters alike wouldn't mind providing the community with its demands. And if you would look at the recent past of Cichla you would see that time and time again it's happened, previously uncommon/rare Cichla being introduced to the community and taking root. In the hobby species like Cichla Kelberi, Piquiti, Melaniae use to be a lot more uncommon. However, thanks to the community for providing a demand and importers/exporters for providing the supply those species have made it into your aquariums.
Now some of these Cichla are more difficult than others to export because of many very real factors. In example, some species are simply more rare than others, and this can be seen in the Kullander & Ferreira 2006 ichthyological survey. To put it into perspective
73 Cichla Temensis specimens were documented in their survey compared to only
6 Cichla Intermedia. But there is more to it than just scarcity, some of these Cichla are harder to get to for the fisherman, some of them are located in areas that are regulated/preserved making it sometimes unlawful to commercially export. And those are just two issues importers/exporters face, there are many more. As you can see there are a lot of logistics when it comes to down the importation/exportation of Cichla. It's not easy.
Eventually though it is a very real real possibility that you will be able to have your very own. And to answer your question about a pair of Cichla Intermedia, I recall a guy in Germany having one, I might be wrong.
