By NICHOLAS SPANGLER
nspangler@MiamiHerald.com

Philip Marraccini, the koi kingpin of South Florida, woke early to pack fish one day this week. The plan was to pack 108 koi into plastic bags, drive up the Palmetto and deposit them in a nameless lake at Miami Dade College's North Campus, where they'll be a keystone of what somebody thought should be called the Rejuvelake Project.

Summerland Tropical Fish Farm, Marraccini's place, is in Princeton, with 35 pools and another 100 or so ''coffin liners'' out back holding 5,000 fish, at the moment. Most of these are koi -- carp to you -- soft-finned freshwater fish indigenous to Asia but prized by collectors all over the world for their colors: red-orange, black, brilliant green. Koi lifespan is measured in decades; some have lived to be 200.

South Florida used to have more than 40 fish farms but Hurricane Andrew put some out of business, and the real estate boom took care of more. About 16 are left, Marraccini said, and when he retires he'll probably sell the land; his son is studying to be an electrical engineer and has no intention of entering the fish farming business.

Marraccini, 61, is donating these fish. Now he calls his sole employee, who lives in a trailer next to the fish tanks.

``You ready to go, Sonny?''

Sonny Wiggins is a 74-year-old man in galoshes, tattooed and tanned dark. ''I'm ready,'' he says.

Koi are said to be soothing and it'd be hard to find a fatter, more complacent fish than the ones in those tanks. The men net them by the dozen and slip them into heavy-duty bags. The fish seem surprised by this but not overly bothered. Then Wiggins wheels out an oxygen tank and shoots a jet into each bag. ''Don't want a drowning fish,'' he says.

For that matter: Don't want a fish to overheat, self-poison on its ammonia waste or get eaten by one of the herons, seagulls or cormorants that stalk the fish farm.

Marraccini doesn't have a fish tank in his house, and this short but by no means comprehensive catalog of modes of ichthyologic death is why.

''I don't want to take care of them when I'm doing it all day,'' he says. ``I'm looking at these fish in a hurry. I'm always worrying about them. To me it's anxiety.''

It is a mercifully traffic-free drive to the nameless lake. Until recently, this lake was home to a large collection of sludge, submerged furniture and failed ceramics projects possibly tossed in rage from the nearby art building.

But the objects were removed and the water was clarified, thanks to something a college news release called ``a bacterial agent called Bacteria G.''

Pomp and circumstance ensued, with television news teams, kids from the college's summer day camp, campus president Jose Vicente in a canoe and a drummer who showed up late but delivered a very satisfying drum roll when the time came.

The dignitaries and most of the children released their fish, and the nameless lake had 107 new koi; and after 7-year-old Alexandria Smikle was convinced the lake held no alligators and her chances of falling in were relatively slight, it was 108.
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