ONE FISH, TWO FISH, RED FISH, BLUE FISH...\...and angel fish and even sharks as aquariums make a big splash.

Byline: Diana E. Lundin Daily News Staff Writer

Pat McLean sometimes stares for hours at her brilliant array of tropical fish, watching them swim leisurely through or dart unpredictably into the crevices of coral in her 125-gallon aquarium.

"It's very relaxing," said McLean, a La Canada Flintridge resident who has percula clowns, high-fin snappers, twin-spotted wrasses and flame angels among the 23 fish she and her husband, Don, keep in their saltwater tank.

"They really have personalities. When they eat, when you see them really in action, it's real entertaining. Sometimes we just turn off the lights and watch them." As does their white Persian cat, Kasha, who sits on her own stool near the tank and becomes mesmerized by the aquatic activity.

The McLeans are having a love affair with their custom-built aquarium and the fish that call it home.

And more people are joining them in the hobby.

"It's growing at a tremendous rate, especially in the last 10 years," said psychologist Lynne Laurita, president of the Marine Aquarium Society of Los Angeles and co-owner of Aqua Trends in Canoga Park. "The development of the living reef ecosystem has really helped to spur on a new level of enthusiasm for the marine hobbyist."

The ecosystem is a complete, ecologically balanced biosystem, and it's what Laurita and her husband, Andrew Lee, have in their home.

"We re-create a piece of the living reef in an aquarium," Lee said. "Everything is alive ... literally alive, to the point it generates nearly all of its own food and eliminates its own waste. All we're doing is moving water through it."

They also add light and manipulate temperature to re-create an outdoor environment. "It's cutting-edge," said Lee, who co-owns Aqua Trends with Laurita. "Environmentalists have been saying for years this is not possible."

One of the living reef pioneers is coming to Los Angeles in a couple of months to talk to the Marine Aquarium Society. Slightly more than a year old, the society's 75 members work to educate themselves not only on fish and aquarium maintenance, but on political and ecological issues facing hobbyists, including the legitimacy of collecting certain species.

"There may not be a hobby 10 years down the road," Laurita said. "It's being threatened by certain environmental groups. That's what worries us."

Don McLean had an aquarium years ago, and when he decided to take up the hobby again, he chose a different approach. He has a custom-built tank and regular service by an aquarium specialist. His wife loves it that way.

"It's all pleasure," she said. "No work."

Much higher up the evolutionary and financial scale than the average goldfish bowl, custom-made aquariums allow for a kind of living art to be a dramatic focal point of any room, from a kitchen to a living room, library or bar.

"People come to us with an idea, and that's where we usually start," said Lee, who designed the McLeans' tank. "You're talking serious dollars here."

A small custom installation can begin at about $1,500 and run to $35,000 or more, depending on how elaborate the design is and what kind of fish will be collected.

One of the more sophisticated and expensive aquariums built by John Farrell and Jim Stevenson of Fish Art in Chatsworth was for a hillside recording studio that houses a ray, two California leopard sharks and an Australian black-tip reef shark in refrigerated water.

Farrell also recently designed and installed a 500-gallon circular tank for a newly restored 1930s Spanish-style mansion in Bel-Air. Encased in a dark wood, the aquarium is 5 feet in diameter, with some 40 tiny blue damsels swimming in it as "test" fish to determine when it is ready to add more tropicals, such as wrasses, puffers and triggers. New fish are introduced slowly as the biology and chemistry of the tank become an ideal aquatic environment.

"It's like collecting," Farrell said. "You have to collect them over a period of time."

Making weekly visits to the aquariums, Farrell can tell which of his customers spend time with their fish and which don't.

"The fish are not as friendly as this," he said, watching the long, slow-motion floating spines of the venomous lion fish as it stares back at him, while a porcupine puffer, a three-toned paddle-fin wrasse and a harlequin tusk fish, which has prominent blue teeth, swim past.

"The friendliest fish are in a pediatrician's office. The kids are looking at them all day," he said.

Fish Art and Aqua Trends not only design the aquariums but come in at least weekly to rotate coral discolored by algae and to feed some of the fish with a more exotic diet, like the lion fish who won't eat anything but goldfish or, if they're not swimming too quickly, damsels that soon become distressed.

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Photo (1-3--color) At top left, an Australian black-tip reef shark and California leopard shark swim in a tank designed by Fish Art in Chatsworth. At left, a spiny, venomous lionfish is a featured attraction in an aquarium that Fish Art installed behind a bar in a private home. Below, Aqua Trends in Canoga Park designed this tank for Dr. Louis Weintraub's Encino office. John McCoy/Daily News (4-5--color) At top above, a porthole offers a view into a 500-gallon tank, designed by Fish Art, in a private home. Above, a living reef in Aqua Trends owners Lynne Laurita and Andrew Lee's home generates nearly all of its own food and eliminates its own waste. (4) John McCoy/Daily News (5) Gus Ruelas/Daily News (6--color) Kasha the cat keeps watch over a 125-gallon aquarium, designed by Aqua Trends, in Pat and Don McLean's home. (7--color) A Fish Art-designed aquarium in a private home functions as a colorful, constantly changing work of art. (8--Cover--color) The age of aquariums John McCoy/Daily News