Marv gets koi with movie stars: aquarium installer and fish-tender is luring rabbis, lawyers as clients.

Marv gets koi with movie stars

Call him fishmonger to the stars, koi crazy or relief from Persian Gulf platitudes.

Marv Stanton may not have gills, but he is perched on top of the aquatic food chain, master of underwater real estate.

One day his offbeat vignettes of L.A.'s other wildlife could make a TV-sitcom producer chirp like Flipper.

Can a business tending tangs, grouping groppers or alleviating algae stay afloat in Los Angeles, where junk bond scandals and smog alerts coexist with kiwi quiche and car-phone fax machines?

You bet your last eel.

"People don't believe what I do," the 38-year-old entrepreneur says with a knowing grin. "When I told my father in 1971 what I wanted to do, he asked me what kind of idiot would pay to have his acquarium serviced? Now I tell him I have 300 idiots."

Lawyers, rabbis, chiropractors and movie producers from Newport Beach to Santa Barbara know Marv's Canoga Park company, Executive Aquarium & Pond Service. Even dancers at a San Fernando Valley bar that uses Stanton's company have something in common with their scaley pets - both wear nothing.

But why should one firm pay another to care for a tank?

These are the lean-and-mean 1990s, light years from the go-go profits - and indulgences - of years past. And heightened tensions are part of the new era.

Aquariums afford the type of relaxing aesthetics that can ease the most uptight of human units, tank tenders say. Pioneering studies by psychologists years ago concluded that watching an aquarium for 15 minutes a day can lower blood pressure and stress levels by 20 percent.

Besides, it can be cheaper than trendy artwork and in some cases reduce the need for magazine subscriptions.

And the tax deductions don't hurt.

While Stanton says fish - and their fussy owners - can send his blood pressure off the register, his job provides him with a six-figure income and and company revenues nearing the $500,000 mark.

"I love my job," he says. "I like fish, but I love the people I meet more."

Others take exception to Stanton's claim his company is the oldest and biggest in the Southland, if not the United States. Fish care can be dog-eat-dog.

Coral Reef Enterprises of Van Nuys boasts a client base of 750, providing similar tank-to-grave service as Executive Pond: custom design, installation and service.

"We are the biggest," declares Coral Reef Vice President Craig Kavin. "We handle everything from the workingman to superstars."

Being a lover of marine escapades can get costly.

Some koi, which Stanton specializes in, go for $2. Others go for $20,000. The Brooklyn, N.Y., native charges roughly $60 to maintain a small aquarium monthly to $1,500 for large ponds. An occasional lobster tank or condominium stream is not too big for him, though he warns customers about the fish-eating taste buds of condors and raccoons.

Custom-made tanks can cost a pretty penny too. Coral Reef once designed a massive cylindrical tank costing $150,000 for someone in the United Arab Emirates.

Stanton, an easy-going type with a confident look and a self-deprecating wit, admits a Jacques Cousteau or ichthyological expert he is not.

Two decades ago he started an aquarium-upkeep shop with a $25 investment while he was in college studying broadcast journalism.

"I didn't even have a business license for the first three years. It was strictly word of mouth. And everything I know now I learned from doing."

At the start, many of his clients turned out to Hollywood types who happened to be fish aficionados. Chevy Chase, James Caan, Liberace, Bill Cosby, Pat Sajak and Michael Jackson were among his clientele.

And celebrities and Rodeo Drive types can be more than a little eccentric about their fish.

One Stanton client was a female star who obtained a pair of earrings that were essentially miniature fish tanks. When she was at one social function, he had to show up every hour to "burp" the fish, or let them breathe. He didn't keep that account long.

Another one of his clients - a wellheeled Beverly Hills plastic surgeon - regularly swam with his fish in a pond Stanton custom designed at his home.

"The guy had 300 fish and had names for them all. They were like his children. The guy's an A-1, 100 percent certified fruitcake."

Stanton also has had to play fish psychoanalyst and paranormalist.

A tipsy star once called him at 3 a.m. asking why his fish were winking at him. One time he found himself vacuuming a client's carpeting at 4:30 in the morning, after an aquarium's tubing was mysteriously slashed. The client thought the tank and the house, originally built by Stan Laurel, were haunted, but Stanton didn't buy it.

Now he's diversified to smaller Southern California businesses, hoping the pressure of capitalism 1990-style will make undersea adventures of the tame kind a must. (Most pet stores are too consumed with selling puppies, parakeets or iguanas to service or child-proof a commercial aquarium, Stanton believes.)

His "bigger accounts" include a huge pond at Loew's Santa Monica Beach Hotel and a 7-million-gallon lake at a Culver City condo project - a man-made lake originally built by MGM studios 59 years ago to film "Showboat." Some of the koi there are nearly two and a half feet long and 60 years old.

He may be doing swimmingly but sometimes being "on call" 24 hours a day, 365 days a year palls.

Many a time he has been a slave to his beeper, fetched from a party to care for an ailing butterfly fish.

"Do you know what it's like to drive 1,500 miles a week in L.A. traffic with all your customers wanting you at a different place at the same time?"

Two years ago he was feeding a carniverous lion fish at an unnamed Los Angeles business when he heard a thump. The sound wasn't made by the spiney fish devouring a goldfish. It was the secretary fainting from the nasty realities of marine survival, a victim of tank Darwinism.

Years earlier, at a trendy fish restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway, Stanton had an experience Marlon Perkins could understand. When he was servicing a lobster tank, one of the crustaceans wiggled free and grabbed hold of a skimpily clad waitress's dress.

"She was running around the room with a lobster on her back and me chasing her," Stanton recalls.

One thing he doesn't have to chase much these days is business. Apparently, the aquarium-upkeep business is recession proof.

"In the first couple months of the recession we had people canceling our service left and right. Now we are on the growth pattern, though," he says.

His most common question: how to count fish. "Count the eyes and divide by two," Stanton retorts.

There may be 50 pretenders to Marv's niche in Southern California, but only a handful, perhaps five, are legitimate, according to Stanton and Coral Reef's Kavin.

Bruce Sergy, president of Aquarium Stock on Beverly Boulevard, agrees. He says would-be fish tenders come and go faster than a goldfish jumps on a carpet.

"We haven't noticed any problem," Sergy says of the economy's slump. "We are operating at capacity."

If Marv's world includes movie-star homes, Sergy's includes the movies themselves. His company has provided the aquariums used in the "L.A. Law" television series and the one through which a vilian's head was smashed in "Lethal Weapon II."

But, movie glitz or small biz, the proof of aquatic value is with the customer.

Rose Goldwater, who has had a fish tank adorning the lobby of her Woodland Hills printing shop since 1988, is a believer.

"It was great," she says of the tank maintained by Executive Pond. "We were happy, the fish were happy and the customers were happy. Anyone who would try to take care of these things themselves are ridiculous."