The Wall of Life : Newbury Park: Hoyt Yeatman’s fish tank is far from ordinary. The 10,000-gallon structure is home to a delicate ecosystem.

Hoyt Yeatman was eating breakfast in London in November when he received a phone call from the States with some alarming news.

His fish tank in Newbury Park was experiencing a major crisis.

This was no fussy goldfish bowl needing its water changed and the dead goldfish scooped out.

Instead, this was Yeatman’s significant other in serious trouble.

The 10,000-gallon fiberglass aquarium is the size of a bedroom and, until the November mishap, was home for six leopard sharks, two rays, a 5-foot moray eel and a host of tropical fish. The tank’s computer is programmed to call for help when its delicate ecosystem is threatened.

After a windstorm caused a power outage, the computer telephoned Yeatman’s secretary at 2 a.m. to report that its pumps had failed, the water level had dropped by a third and 5,000 gallons of saltwater were needed in a hurry. She relayed the computer’s pleas to Yeatman, who cut short his trip and flew back home to fix the tank, which had cost more than $40,000 and had taken three years to build.

Handling such a crisis is the price one pays for trying to maintain a bit of the ocean in a suburban house, but Yeatman, 37, bears this cross with boyish exuberance.

As one of the founders of Dream Quest, a special-effects company based in Simi Valley, Yeatman makes a living creating artificial worlds for movies, commercials and theme parks. The company received an Academy Award in 1990 for the creation of underwater action scenes with computer-manipulated models in “The Abyss.” In 1991, it won another Oscar for “Total Recall.”

Yeatman completed construction of the 14- by 16-foot tank in 1989, after consulting San Diego’s Sea World, a structural engineer and national guidelines for building near a nuclear reactor. In case of an earthquake, the eight-foot-deep tank is designed to ride it out separately from the house.

Yeatman may be in show business, but there is not a television in sight in his sparsely furnished Newbury Park house. Instead, a black leather couch faces a 10-foot-wide view into the tank, where indigo, magenta and blue tropical fish swim around piles of rocks and a coral reef.

Yeatman says he spends hours watching the underwater scene while listening to recordings of the ocean.

“It’s a hobby, like a train set,” he said. “It’s not noisy, it doesn’t make any smell and it doesn’t bark. And fish don’t care if you leave home.”

Maybe so, but Yeatman does carry a cellular phone on his hip in case his tank needs him, and he knows that it takes exactly 13 1/2 minutes to travel from work back home if he gets a call.

The marine world he created must be constantly monitored. Any fluctuation in the temperature or imbalance in the salt and oxygen levels will send the tank into emergency mode. If the lights fail in their simulation of the sun rising and setting, Yeatman will hear about it.

And when things go wrong, a chain reaction starts and it is difficult to stop.

It is an experience other people should have, he says.

“Anyone who does offshore oil drilling should have a saltwater tank in their house,” Yeatman said. “They would really understand what goes wrong when they screw up. The whole ocean is a house of cards.”

Even before the November disaster, Yeatman began switching from a cold- to warm-water tank. He gave his leopard sharks to a fish distributor, and the moray eel, which killed two sharks during its stint in Newbury Park, now lives in a tank in a Texas bar, he said.

Now he has 40 tropical fish from Hawaii, Florida and the Fiji Islands and just one two-foot-wide ray that combs the tank floor looking for food.

Yeatman buys the tropical fish from a Santa Monica-based marine collectors company that also sells fish to the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas for its 20,000-gallon tank. The challenge is figuring out which fish can live with each other, Yeatman said.

“You get them so they’re compatible, so they don’t eat each other,” he said.

When things are running smoothly, they seem content, he said. “They don’t seem unhappy. They get fed every day. They get medicated if there’s any problem.”

And Yeatman denies that the fish have any emotional hold over him.

“It’s building a whole environment,” Yeatman said. “If I could get a piece of the moon, it would be just as interesting.”