Aquarium builders score new reality series on Animal Planet

Dere — pardon us, "their" — New York accents could slice a three-story Stage Deli pastrami on rye, extra fat.

Las Vegans by way of Brooklyn and Long Island. And Animal Planet.

"I work, he don’t," says Wayde King.

"Wayde and I are more like brothers than brothers-in-law," says Brett Raymer.

Could they be Vegas’ next "Pawn Stars"? Bearish galoots building ornate aqua-mansions for exotic fish. One a chrome-domed, compulsive smiler whose every thought seems to beget three more almost immediately. One a crewcut-sheared workaholic with an impressive array of eye rolls, exasperated grimaces and shrugs of surrender.

Six weeks on Animal Planet’s schedule should answer that as "Tanked," a new reality series starring King, Raymer, their family and Decatur Boulevard aquarium business, premieres Friday (9 p.m., Cox Cable Channel 58).

"All the customers would come in and would say we were great characters," says Raymer, 41, whose brother-in-law refers to him as both "visionary" and "big mouth" on the pilot episode. "Wayde and I would be talking, yelling, screaming, all kinds of chaos and I’m thinking, ‘We should do something about it.’ And Wayde’s like, ‘You don’t do much work, why don’t you run with it?’ "

Reality junkie Raymer pitched the notion to the film department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which didn’t have the dough to produce it, suggesting instead that Raymer shop it around production factories in Los Angeles. One — Nancy Glass Productions — bit, and so, eventually, did Animal Planet.

Calling their outfit, Acrylic Tank Manufacturing (just south of Interstate-215), the world’s largest builder of aquariums, King (the Long Islander) and Raymer (the Brooklynite) create fish tanks as outsized as their personalities, from residential aquariums to color-burst behemoths — up to 50,000 gallons — that decorate businesses, luxury hotels, Fortune 500 companies and mansions worth millions from New York to Scotland.

You’d be surprised where fish can survive and thrive — in tanks built from a car cut in half, a jukebox, a skate ramp and a beer keg inside a man cave.

"Tanked" follows the fellas on their projects, but as with most "reality" series, it’s the characters’ kookiness fueling the show, this one peopled with supporting players such as bookkeeper Heather, King’s wife and Raymer’s sister, their dad, aka "The General," and a brash bunch of designers, engineers, installers and cleaners.

One co-star is especially appreciative being on the cusp of potential stardom.

"Prison humbled me," says Raymer, who was convicted of drug dealing and spent 2002 and part of 2003 at the federal Nellis Prison Camp. "I made a bad choice, got arrested, paid the price. I learned my lesson and moved forward with my life. It’s not like the television world is not familiar with people who have gotten in trouble."

(That roster includes "Home Improvement’s" Tim Allen, jailed for drug dealing, and "Frasier’s" Kelsey Grammer, convicted of cocaine possession.)

Three jobs intersect in the "Tanked" pilot, as the boys construct the aquarium that now greets visitors to the Tropicana’s Mob Experience, hit the Palms to drop coral inserts into a shark-infested tank, and concoct a New York-themed aquarium for married ex-Gothamites.

"Why don’t we put flat-screen TVs in it?" says Raymer, grinning and brimming with impulsive ideas for the Mob tank, in front of a Tropicana executive.

"These are things we need to talk about before we make promises," King, 45, tells him, deploying one of his eye rolls.

"Whaaaat?" Raymer says, with a "Who, me?" twinkle.

"Big mouth started throwing TVs out there," King says at a staff meeting, giving bro-in-law a sidelong glance.

Can they create it? We follow them through highlights of the construction process as panels are made, sized and cut while ideas are bandied about for mob-style add-ons.

Finally finished, the tank is an aqua Cosa Nostra, filled not only with a rainbow selection of fish but also a tommy gun, crowbar, 1932 New York license plate, cement shoes (actually Raymer’s) street scenes of old-time New York and Vegas and sticks of dynamite.

Flat-screens? Tucked inside waterproof, acrylic panels. Showing it off to a reporter recently, Raymer gestured to the attraction that morning: a scene from "The Godfather," unspooled like some deep-sea cinema. ("Godfather"-philes, take note: It’s the scene where Don Tommasino visits young fugitive Michael Corleone at his Sicilian hideaway.)

More funny-frightening is a segment in which angry, terrified Heather is coaxed by her hubby and brother to slip inside the Palms tank — they didn’t know sharks were already there, they swear! — since she’s the only one small enough to wiggle in to place the coral inserts.

"That’s a black-tip in there, I’m not going in there, are you out of your mind? I’m gonna throw up!" she squawks before finally donning a bathing suit for the job, freaking out as sharks casually encircle her.

"Her toes look like squid," Brett says, giggling. "The sharks are starting to go nuts." She emerges, steaming mad but escaping a fate as a shark snack.

On the New York project, Raymer — in another of his off-the-wall but workable inspirations — gets his hands on an old phone booth. (Remember those antiques? Superman’s dressing room?)

Hollowed out, it’s transformed into a bubbly Big Apple tribute, filled with fish as New Yorker stand-ins (including yellow tang as the taxis) and touches including a skyline backdrop, retro lamppost and copies of The New York Times.

"That looks badass," says a proud King.

Where’s the scene of them celebrating by wolfing down a pastrami on rye, extra fat (with a cream soda, of course)?

Dese guys earned it.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@review journal.com or 702-383-0256.