SMALL BUSINESS - Maker of toilet aquarium swims into new territory

This wasn't how the Westminster-based company set out to make its name. Really. The serious-minded small business was founded seven years ago with the worthy goal of ending the biggest single source of wasted water in any household: leaky and overflowing toilets.

Its first product, the FlowManager, was a sensor that attached to the toilet bowl to detect leaks and shut off the water to the fixture. It's been welcomed by nursing homes and other care facilities.

"The FlowManager paid for itself in four months in what it saved for us in terms of prevented accidents and cleanup costs," said Jim Parkhurst, chief executive of New Port Bay Hospital in Newport Beach, where patients suffering from dementia sometimes flushed their diapers down the toilets, hopelessly clogging them.

But the FlowManager was clunky and hung down in plain sight below the bowl. Its batteries had to be changed every few months. The company's five employees set to work on a second model.

The H2Orb, which sits inside the tank, can be remotely monitored and operated and has a lithium battery that needs changing only every seven years.

But the real inspiration struck during a brainstorming session on how to demonstrate the H2Orb at trade shows using a clear acrylic toilet.

They were dads who had all flushed their share of dead guppies and goldfish over the years, and the same thought hit all of them: What if we had fish in that tank and flushed it and the fish stayed and didn't go down the drain?

"We all got a good laugh out of it and quickly forgot about it," recalled David Parrish, the chief operating officer for AquaOne. "Then I heard that Richard Quintana and our chief designer were actually trying to build one."

Quintana, 53, is AquaOne's chief executive, a former Marine and 1974 graduate of the Control Data Institute in Anaheim.

Quintana said the company originally had no plans to sell such a tank -- it was simply a trade-show gimmick to attract passersby to look at the new sensor. But something unexpected happened.

Crowds gathered to see the fish tank toilet -- and ignored the new sensor the company hoped to market to institutions and homeowners.

"It was insane," Parrish said. "We had to set up appointments for people because so many people were coming by to play with the fish tank that we couldn't present our products. People were taking photos with their phone cameras. They wanted to buy the thing."