What to do with Rufus?

Overgrown palm trees encircle Bahooka, which hasn’t aged well. Like the rusted boats in the parking lot, the restaurant has lost its seaworthiness.   (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Charles Danesky clears discarded aquarium gravel from the parking lot outside Bahooka. Rufus the fish, who has watched many of the restaurant’s diners grow up, probably wouldn’t survive a relocation.   (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Bahooka’s current owners have expressed surprise that a fish could arouse such passions. But to many, Rufus is the only living reminder of a place that children once loved more than Chuck E. Cheese.   (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Empty aquariums and stands fill up the banquet hall inside Bahooka, an iconic Tiki restaurant that has been closed since March.   (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Fish are for sale in one of the dozens of functioning aquariums being maintained in the long-closed Bahooka, which opened in 1967.   (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Jorge Machada locks the back door of Bahooka after cleaning aquariums and feeding the fish. Mastache says his main concern with a move is that Rufus will not survive. He admitted he would miss his companion of 13 years.   (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The entry bar greets ghosts at Bahooka, which looked like the Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland -- but a darker, seedier version that the Pirates of the Caribbean might have hung out in after a shift.   (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

A chain holds up a table in one of the dozens of booths inside Bahooka. Cofounder Darlene Fliegel said the restaurant closed because no one had the time to run it anymore. When it was sold, she said, everyone assumed Rufus would have a home.   (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Rufus is no aggressive hunter cutting through the water -- just an old fish heaving himself across an 8-foot-long tank, scouting for floating carrots with unblinking eyes. At 37, he has lived roughly twice as long as he would have in the wild.   (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

When Bahooka closed, everyone assumed the new owner would integrate Rufus and the other fish into a new tiki restaurant. But the property has changed hands twice since Bahooka was shuttered.   (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

A jail cell is featured in the dining area inside Bahooka. For decades, the restaurant drew crowds with an incredible aquatic menagerie of more than 1,000 creatures -- so many it was as if you were eating underwater.   (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

For nearly a year now, Rufus and the other aquatic creatures have been living in the abandoned restaurant, a dim warren of dark scarred wood and burbling water.   (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)