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By CARYN ROUSSEAU
Associated Press Writer

August 22, 2004, 8:34 PM EDT


LONOKE, Ark. -- There is a good chance that the colorful carp you won at the
county fair or picked up at the local pet shop came from Pool Fisheries, which
sits in the middle of an Arkansas field in Lonoke County, the self-proclaimed
baitfish capital of the world where more than 6 billion minnows and goldfish are
bred each year.

Florida produces high-end ornamental goldfish, some with colored lumps on their
heads, flowing tails or bug eyes, but in terms of regular goldfish production,
Arkansas is king. The state had $5.3 million in sales last year out of a total
$9.3 million for all states, said Nathan Stone, a fisheries specialist with the
University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.

Pool Fisheries is the center of that industry, producing 250 million goldfish
each year in a warehouse that holds 28 huge concrete tanks full of the finicky
fish.

Fish pathologist Eric Park grabs a net and skims it along the surface of a
1,500-gallon pool holding 10,000 goldfish, then picks through them to find the
perfect specimen.

"Everything in here is going to be going to an aquarium store," Park says as the
fish flip about in the net.

It is Park's job to keep the conditions perfect for them. He pulls a bronze one
from the net.

"This is the original color," he said, running his thumb along a side fin. "All
goldfish start off this color. As they mature about 90 percent of them will turn
orange and 10 percent of them will stay this color."

Park can achieve any color combination, even spawn fish with two tails or a fat
body.

"Say I want red and white," Park said, "I can hand pick through thousands of
fish and find the perfect example of what I want and let them breed with each
other."

Even for Park and his crew, there is no easy way to tell the gender of fish. The
only real test is when the fish are spawning. That's when the males develop
little bumps on their gills.

"We call them whiskers," he said.

Park helps decide how to breed the goldfish to get exactly the type consumers
want to take home. Pool supplies most of the fish for PetSmart stores
nationwide, where people purchase them for pets.

Stone said goldfish have two uses. Feeder goldfish are used as bait or meals for
other animals; ornamental goldfish are the fancier variety people keep as pets.

"Zoos that have animals that will only eat a live feed, they need something to
feed them," Stone said.

It starts with workers pulling chairs up to the large tubs and sorting through
the fish with their bare hands, examining each one and flipping it to the side
when they find a match. There are more than 100 varieties of goldfish, some that
can live up to 25 years.

Breeding is delicate and time-consuming. Spawning season starts in the spring,
lasting through April and May before the weather turns too hot. Workers line
60-foot-by-8-foot blue concrete pools with coconut husk fiber mats and fill them
with water.

"We actually have it running through so it simulates a stream," Park said.

The mats are so similar to grass that the fish will lay eggs on them, as many as
200,000 in one area. Once the eggs are laid, workers drain the pool and bring
the single mats inside, where they are incubated and hatch in three days in
large blue tubs. The fish are barely visible to the eye. About 3,500 of them
could fit in a teaspoon.

"I promise you if you walked up to this tank, you would say, 'Where are the
fish?' Even though there were a half million of them," Park said.

When they're ready, the fish are moved into specially prepared outdoor ponds
where they will grow into full-size goldfish. Park can determine the size of
each fish by placing a certain number into each pond or tub. The smallest fish
are a half-gram. The largest can grow to one pound.

"If we want a one-inch fish we put so many in there," he said. "They'll grow to
fill the space. They actually excrete an antigrowth hormone that will stop their
growth depending on the size of their environment."

Workers feed the fish soybean pellets every day. After the fish mature and Pool
is ready to fill an order, workers pull on hip waders and harvest the goldfish
from the ponds and move them indoors to one of the 28 warehouse pools. At times
they have to pull out bullfrog tadpoles or crawfish that get mixed in.

"When we're done spawning we have fish to sell all year long," Park said.

Plastic hoses snake above the tubs.

"That's oxygen that we pump into them so they can breathe," Park said. "So the
environment is perfect for these guys. We don't want to stress them."

Specific distributors want certain sizes, so workers take large metal slotted
grates in different dimensions to separate the goldfish. The fish that don't fit
through the slots are the winners.

"The smaller go back to the pond to grow more," he said.

Once they're sorted, they're ready to ship to New York, Chicago and Los Angeles
every week. "We look at a fish to make sure it's strong and healthy before we
harvest them," Park said. "If they're a weak animal, they'll die and if they die
we'll go out of business."

Semi-trucks with 100 gallon compartments pull through the warehouse, collecting
between 3,000 and 4,000 pounds of goldfish. Boxes of goldfish are prepared for
FedEx to pick up for overnight delivery. Assembly line workers pour the fish and
water into plastic bags that are injected with pure oxygen. The bags are tied
shut and placed into a plastic foam cooler fit into a cardboard box. Ice packs
are included to keep the fish chilled.

"If it's Texas it's two packs," Park said. "If it's Wisconsin, it's one."

A machine tapes the boxes shut and they are lifted onto a truck to be delivered
to the pet store the next morning.