It's a small "scale" operation whose outcome is still murky. Wellington officials are installing catfish from the Amazon in the swimming pools of foreclosed houses to see whether the 18-inch fish will be a cost-effective, eco-friendly method of cleaning stagnant pools.

Most bottom-feeders don't make it past the guard gate. But Amazonian catfish, fashionably leopard-spotted and wearing fins as flamboyant as pool party caftans, are living the good life in several upscale Wellington neighborhoods hard-hit by foreclosures, including Olympia and Versailles.

"The water looks lighter around the edges," said Debra Mitchell, the village's lead code compliance officer, peering into a pool in Versailles, whose water is a putrid olive green.

The village has started a pilot program using the algae-eating fish, called pterygoplichthys and commonly known as "plecos" or "sailfin catfish," in slime-choked swimming pools. Mitchell said she hopes the slime-eaters will be an inexpensive and eco-friendly way to clean up abandoned pools, an all-you-can-eat banquet of scum.

Three weeks after she released eight plecos into a pool, Mitchell checked their progress. No fish were visible in the opaque water, but there was evidence of their progress.

"See those trails on the steps? That's where the fish moved around eating the algae," said Mitchell, who started investigating using plecos when she remembered an old friend used algae-eating fish to keep her chemical-free pool clean.

With nearly 9 percent of the village's homes in foreclosure or pre-foreclosure - the highest rate in Palm Beach County - the village is struggling to keep up with the maintenance of vacant properties. Pools behind foreclosed houses have become swamps, overflowing with stagnant rainwater.

"When I realized that the chlorine was just not working, I thought there had to be an alternative," Mitchell said.

She consulted the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Science, where scientists encouraged her to experiment with plecos. They put her in contact with the Shiner Shack fish farm in Bartow, where owners Dave Hoy and Chris Spangler have employed them for years to clean fish tanks.

"They're good janitors," drawled Hoy, "but I still give them a stern talking to before putting them to work."

Small plecos are common in the aquarium trade, which led to the South American natives' release, and subsequent spread, throughout most of Florida's freshwater lakes and canals, where they grow as large as 2 feet. Hoy and Spangler caught Wellington's plecos in a lake near Bartow and cleaned them of parasites before driving them to their new luxury digs.

So far, Mitchell and Hoy have stocked six pools. With algae growth exploding in the August heat, they plopped in additional plecos on Friday. Smaller pools, with 12,000 to 15,000 gallons of water, have 15 plecos.

Plecos are so adaptable that if algae chokes a lake, or a swimming pool, of its dissolved oxygen, the fish just rise to the surface and gulp a bubble of air, Hoy said. These algae-eaters won't be taking time away from their jobs to make fish whoopee, either. According to Hoy, they need muddy banks to breed and lay their eggs.

The fish cost $15 each, plus the cost of delivery and installation. A year of pleco pool service will cost the village about $700, Mitchell estimates, compared with $7,000 a year for chemical treatment. The costs, in the form of liens, must be paid by a house's new owners.

When the house is sold, the plecos will be transferred to another pool or destroyed.