Bait for winter

[rdhammah]

just read a ton of pages from "this year's bait trapping thread". question i have for those of you who keep a lot of bait. i tried last year and kept them in my basement. water temp was probably 50-60 degrees. not sure. used a rubbermaid stock tank. filtered. kept shiners in it mixed with mummichugs. in about 2 months, lost all of about 20 dz to a fungus (ICH). any of you guys ever had this problem?  Think it may have been from mixing the Mummies with them?

[WhiteSquall]

Hard to tell exactly what caused it.
That water temp seems a bit warm to me.
Overstocked tank? Not sure how big your tank is
Keep in eye on the pH and ammonia levels.

[Ice Scratcher]

Mine keep really well at about 33°F...

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[chilly-willy]

I am thinking temp but fishe like emeralds like Temps be low 40 *F wate Temps I want to say more like 32*f to 36*F  higher Temps give more stress to the fish seen in these links also might be water changes..

http://www.oscarfish.com/article-home/water/83-reducing-ammonia.html


Another link on ich

http://m.wikihow.com/Treat-Tropical-Fish-with-White-Spot-Disease-(Ich)

[LostOne]

I will also guess, too warm. I keep about 200-300 shiners in two small barrels, from the end of October to about April. I don't feed, I don't aerate, or filter...I change the water after about a week, then again the next week, then maybe once a month until I don't need them anymore. I use cold well water directly out of my faucet and keep the water as cold as possible without freezing. I've tried several other methods, including a double 55gal. barrel set up with pool filters, I also have a chest freezer that didn't work well for me (seems to work for others), but the method I use now is simple and I usually only lose about a dozen shiners over the several months that I keep them. Good luck!

[Ice Scratcher]

I will also guess, too warm. I keep about 200-300 shiners in two small barrels, from the end of October to about April. I don't feed, I don't aerate, or filter...I change the water after about a week, then again the next week, then maybe once a month until I don't need them anymore. I use cold well water directly out of my faucet and keep the water as cold as possible without freezing. I've tried several other methods, including a double 55gal. barrel set up with pool filters, I also have a chest freezer that didn't work well for me (seems to work for others), but the method I use now is simple and I usually only lose about a dozen shiners over the several months that I keep them. Good luck!

Same here but on a smaller scale.. Two five gallon buckets and maybe 4 or five dozen shiners.. Depending on the number of fish I might change the water every other day.. But smaller container= more water changes..

But like you said, no bubbler, no food, good for months.. Well water, and kept so cold, sometimes it gets a little skim ice on top..

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[Shack man Shoney]

Last year was my first attempt trying to trap and keep minnows.... I think i probably made every mistake known to man.  I built my tank out of a 35 gallon rubbermaid trash can and used a cartrige type whole house water filter with dual aerator bubblers. I kept it in my garage that i only heat when im out there, and when i heated the garage up i had a couple 2 liter bottles of frozen water that i could drop in to keep the temp right at 34-36 degrees. I guess where the main problem started was last October when i was not able to trap anything but 5"-6" creek chubs. I think i only trapped maybe a half a dozen fathead minnows total. Since im in a area where bait can be a little unreliable at times i decided to just make a deal with a bait shop and buy some bulk minnows. After some discussion with the bait shop owner about the size of my tank and what it was capable of sustaining, he agreed to order me a "gallon" of minnows for $62. If your wondering how many is in a "gallon" come to find out its about 100 dozen.... Roughly 1200 minnows. It went good for the first 3-4 days and i was marveling at the better mousetrap i had built.... Then the charcoal filter plugged up. Which was not a huge deal because i had a backups that i changed out and i started changing the water out every other day to try and help out the filter. Which is right about the time i started loosing a few, and by the end of the first week i had lost around a dozen total... Which was acceptable in my book since it was only 1 or 2 per day. Somewhere around week 3 something happened and i lost 5-7 dozen in 1 day (PH spike???) So i started changing the water daily and checking ph to try and avoid the losses and get the tank back under control. What a PITA that became!!! I was giving minnows to anyone who was going fishing (which wasent many due to crappy ice conditions around here) to try and get the numbers down to a more manageable level. In January i went to South Dakota for 2 days and took 20 dozen with me fishing which left probably about 25 or so dozen in the tank. I changed filters and water before i left and noticed a brownish scum (ICK???) developing on the tank walls. When i got back i had more alive in the 5 gallon bucket that i had taken with me than i did in the tank in the garage.....

What did I learn from this experience??? 1 START OUT SMALL, I have read somewhere afterward not to populate more than 1 dozen minnows per gallon of tank water and i was 3x over that limit in the beginning. 2 Its not very easy to get a tank back into harmony once everything has gone haywire. 3 My charcoal filters were not nearly as effective as i thought they would be at removing ammonia. 4 pay attention to details and read all the info you can find about it. I feel like had i started out with 30 dozen this would have been a much happier experience:(

[chilly-willy]

Your right start small I would start with Like 10 to 20 doz of minnows in the 100 gallong stock tank.. you have seen the link to the filter the guy made for his rummber maid 100 gallon stock tank with the kitty litter box I suggest you do the same.. but for sure start small you can always buy more minnows you can't get them back if they die.. by the way clean that stock tank now I would use bleach and bleach it good to get rid of the old ich and scrub it well.. and clean the bleach out well before you add the fish to it.. by the way I suggest a washed fish gravel in the bottom of the tank it give some were for the fish poo to go and cling to .. instead of going strait threw the filter.. and buy a siphon fish tank cleaning vaccum that cleans the gravel with fish in it to get rid of some of the poo.. I would do this once a mouth at least .. but start out small so it's not a big waste.. if you dip minnows cut back on them a tad.. I would only do a dozen or two per ten gallons at first but that's just me..

[thedirtydirtyfisherman]

The reason why the ammonia and everything got out of wack was that there was no bio filter.  You can buy the mix of bacteria and good bio agents from pet supply places.  You also want some sort of high surface area structure in the tank for these bacteria to build.  I have used green scrub pads cleaned thoroughly and the this seems to give the bacteria plenty of surface area.  You want your system to be running, about at least a week (2 is better) before you put fish in there.  And I always recommend adding small amounts of fish rather than a huge batch to a new system.  You can also had a water conditioner, minnow saver i think they call it.  Turns the water blue but helps with keeping the bioslime on the minnows skin healthy and also provided some nutrients and buffer to the water.

[Ice Scratcher]

I think that blue color comes from the copper they add to it.. I think that's the component that keeps the ich away..

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[Ice Scratcher]

Read the labels well... Once you have a good amount of biological filtration established. Because some treatments call for a quarantine tank because they can wipe out all your helpful biological bacteria in one dose.. It's like starting over with a brand new tank again, except you have a build up of organic material that can lead to some crazy algae issues/cyanobacteria...

Any lack of biological filtration can be made up and kept safe with water changes though...

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[Shack man Shoney]

The reason why the ammonia and everything got out of wack was that there was no bio filter.  You can buy the mix of bacteria and good bio agents from pet supply places.  You also want some sort of high surface area structure in the tank for these bacteria to build.  I have used green scrub pads cleaned thoroughly and the this seems to give the bacteria plenty of surface area.  You want your system to be running, about at least a week (2 is better) before you put fish in there.  And I always recommend adding small amounts of fish rather than a huge batch to a new system.  You can also had a water conditioner, minnow saver i think they call it.  Turns the water blue but helps with keeping the bioslime on the minnows skin healthy and also provided some nutrients and buffer to the water.

From what I have learned and read since last winter you have hit the nail on the head. My tank got started up in October and I did use the bio agents weeks prior to ever dropping a fish in it. I did successfully keep 40-50 chubs in it prior to my gallon shipment in late November, which was finally all done by late January.  I had zero surface area structure to build bacteria and i do believe something in my tank/system had made many of them sick. I felt it was the huge bio mass i dropped in all at once that was the true problem. This year im doing a five gallon bucket with 5 dozen minnows. Its less to lose and much much less work. Lol, maybe some day i will fire that 35gal tank again...... Jut won't be this year.

[Ice Scratcher]

Shack Man, I would split that 5 dozen into two five gallon buckets..

In aquariums they recommend an inch per gallon of fish.. No real surface area for bio filtering in a bucket..

You can use three buckets, two with fish, and the other already filled from the last time you did a 50% water change to each bucket.. Fill it up right after every water change and keep it where you keep the minnows so no worries about temperature shocking up or down. If you have chlorine in your tap water letting it sit for a day will allow it to dissipate as well..

Although you may already familiar with all the above..

Good luck!!

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The benefits are, not all the eggs in one basket..

[Shack man Shoney]

Shack Man, I would split that 5 dozen into two five gallon buckets..

In aquariums they recommend an inch per gallon of fish.. No real surface area for bio filtering in a bucket..

You can use three buckets, two with fish, and the other already filled from the last time you did a 50% water change to each bucket.. Fill it up right after every water change and keep it where you keep the minnows so no worries about temperature shocking up or down. If you have chlorine in your tap water letting it sit for a day will allow it to dissipate as well..

Although you may already familiar with all the above..

Good luck!!

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The benefits are, not all the eggs in one basket..

Good idea, That makes even more sense and yes I do have to let it set for 24 hrs to eliminate the chlorine. Thank you IS.

[Ice Scratcher]

Good idea, That makes even more sense and yes I do have to let it set for 24 hrs to eliminate the chlorine. Thank you IS.

You're welcome!!

I have well water but I pretty much do the same as i advised.. I usually only buy a couple scoops a season, because it usually seems I end up taking more off the lake than I bought because someone inevitably offers their unused minnows on their way off the lake because they'll die anyway..

Sometimes it's funny because they have so many.. I'm like, I don't want all of them man.. If I take em all, they'll all die lol.. They don't always understand the overpopulation concept..

At the same token, I always tell whoever I'm meeting up with I already got enough bait for us...

But I've kept shiners in the two bucket plan all winter.. Works great..

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Obviously once you get down to a couple/few dozen you can set a bucket aside...

[gunn308]

I use 2-18 Gal. rubbermaid totes they cost about 7 bucks each and put a bubbler and aquarium filter in each along with a couple Tbsp. of kosher salt to my well water and keep 20 dz in each one. I check ammonia every coupla weeks and monthly clean filter and change 1/2 of the water. I trap my own bait from a pond out back and leave the mix of golden and common shiners and dace in a bucket of pond water for 48 to 72 hrs to get most of the crap out of the new bait. That helps the ammonia levels a lot. Keeping the water under 50 F and you will not have to feed your bait and they won't crap.

[joefishmore]

Don't start too early, it is still warm. The cooler you can keep them the better. And don't forget they have to live on what reserves they have.
I catch some and keep them in a brook until the water gets pretty close to freezing. Bring them in then nd keep them in an old bathtub.Keep  about 10 0r 12 dozen with no aereator  Will keep a couple months there before fungus starts to set in even tho I salt them.
Don't use many anymore because I mostly like to jig.
The bathtub by the way is in a cool cellar.

[rdhammah]

Hard to tell exactly what caused it.
That water temp seems a bit warm to me.
Overstocked tank? Not sure how big your tank is
Keep in eye on the pH and ammonia levels.

didn't mean to ignore you. appreciate your response. the tank is one of those 100 gal rubbermaid stock tanks. Had filter running for about 2 weeks prior to adding my 1st 2-3 dozen shiners.  A week later, got another few dz. Next week, went trapping local salt marsh creek for the mummichaugs.  loaded up with about 12 dz.
Did some research on Ich. if the fungus spores do not attach to host, it dies.
Would like to set tank up outdoors this year. wondering how you guys that keep your tanks outside  insulate it on the sides and on top as well as how do you keep the filter from freezing? I have a back deck that i can put it under.

[APJ]

didn't mean to ignore you. appreciate your response. the tank is one of those 100 gal rubbermaid stock tanks. Had filter running for about 2 weeks prior to adding my 1st 2-3 dozen shiners.  A week later, got another few dz. Next week, went trapping local salt marsh creek for the mummichaugs.  loaded up with about 12 dz.
Did some research on Ich. if the fungus spores do not attach to host, it dies.
Would like to set tank up outdoors this year. wondering how you guys that keep your tanks outside  insulate it on the sides and on top as well as how do you keep the filter from freezing? I have a back deck that i can put it under.

Get a old 15 cubic foot freezer and a clamp on flood lamp point it at filter no ice problem. Freezer all insulated.

[chilly-willy]

Would like to set tank up outdoors this year. wondering how you guys that keep your tanks outside  insulate it on the sides and on top as well as how do you keep the filter from freezing? I have a back deck that i can put it under.

I would keep that stock tank out side but un insulated and put a stock tank heater in it that uses like 1500 watts  I think one will work but two maybe needed to keep it totally ice free .. skim ice is fine as long as it don't freeze solid you should be fine.. that's why I think one should work of those heaters.. you want to keep it as cold as posible for the bait and some ice is fine on side and top but for sure don't want it to freeze solid .. is the deck kind of sheltreed from the eliments?? If so get a heater for stock tanks or a stock tank de icer.  Wind will effect the tank freeze amount when out side people put stock tank in un heated barns with a heater or de icer in the tank so cattle can drink threw out winter.. there is always skim ice on the tanks in barns so I think it should be cold enough for one heater if sheltered from elements a bit.. but like I said before always have a spare heater.. just encase.. I would not insulate it  not needed .. with a good sized heater..also check with the local Fram fleet stores and see what they suggest to.. just to keep it barely ice free .. 

[rdhammah]

porch is 10x14 and about 5' clearance. I have kayaks and canoe on a rack under it. porch runs east/west with a prevailing wind from the west. The house is on the north side. the boat rack is on the west side. there is a bulkhead on the west about 8' from the deck and a central ac unit right next to the porch on the west side. No sno build up under the porch. need to keep away from house as ice forms there from melting snow from porch and roof. what about the filter? how do I protect that?
BTW, I thank you all for your suggestions.
APJ - i'd like to get a working one and leave it in the house and keep the water cold and not worry about the filter.
 

[chilly-willy]

What kind of filter are you running ? If it is a regular aquarium filter for like a 40 gallon tank it most likely is to small. Like a tube  sucks from bottom of tank and dump in to the tank like a  hang on back type filter there is not suficent filtration for over say a 3to 4  doz when you add 6to8 doz in the tank that will only keep up with say 3 doz a lot of amonina builds up.  What i would do is some research on filters like that kitty litter box fliter I showed earlier and find a 275 gph to 300gph pump and add a small aquarium heater like s 250 watt to the inside of the box or tube..  like silicone the heater cord in to the kitty liter box or even  like a  6 or 8 inch schedule 40 pvc pipe cap it at each end  and turn it in to a suction type  filter.. so it does not leak air.. mainly got to rember moving water don't freeze standing water does.. but read up on types of filtration and how it works.. like at this link..


http://homeaquaria.com/aquarium-filter-types/

[Ice Scratcher]

You mentioned keeping it on a deck..

Just keep in mind 100 gallon tank weighs 836 pounds of just water...

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[chilly-willy]

Is there any way to add say lauan or some other kind of wood to block wind to the area  from any direction like if it was in a small shed ??  Wind whipping threw the area will for sure freeze it faster.. or even encase the tank with some wood on four sides like a shed.. but still have access to the stock tank??  Then use a stock tank de icer to keep ice off once ice starts to form on the stock tank..put the heater in it.  Or does it not conform to the laws of your neighbor hood ?? Some areas like we're I live the shed has to match the house etc etc.. but this is all up to you and the time your willing to devote to the project??

[rdhammah]

You mentioned keeping it on a deck..

Just keep in mind 100 gallon tank weighs 836 pounds of just water...

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under the deck. cement floor

[rdhammah]

Is there any way to add say lauan or some other kind of wood to block wind to the area  from any direction like if it was in a small shed ??  Wind whipping threw the area will for sure freeze it faster.. or even encase the tank with some wood on four sides like a shed.. but still have access to the stock tank??  Then use a stock tank de icer to keep ice off once ice starts to form on the stock tank..put the heater in it.  Or does it not conform to the laws of your neighbor hood ?? Some areas like we're I live the shed has to match the house etc etc.. but this is all up to you and the time your willing to devote to the project??

i was thinking about this too. ....laws? there are laws? JK. I don't think boxing in an area below the deck would be a problem

[MAINETROUTWHISPERER]

Last year I keept a bunch of bait in my heated basement (+-60 degrees) and had no issues. Used a 35 gal rubber maid tote and a large fish tank filter and bubbler from my old turtle tank. I did a 50-75 % water change every 3-4 weeks Maybe longer if it was looking good. This year I got a 100gal stock tank and made a fora its filter from a. Bucket and pond pump. Hoping to not have to do water changes as I only keep them from Nov-Mar. Hoping it works out good!

Also made a screen to separate the bigger bait.

[rdhammah]

mainewoodsballer - what size pump you using?

[APJ]

porch is 10x14 and about 5' clearance. I have kayaks and canoe on a rack under it. porch runs east/west with a prevailing wind from the west. The house is on the north side. the boat rack is on the west side. there is a bulkhead on the west about 8' from the deck and a central ac unit right next to the porch on the west side. No sno build up under the porch. need to keep away from house as ice forms there from melting snow from porch and roof. what about the filter? how do I protect that?
BTW, I thank you all for your suggestions.
APJ - i'd like to get a working one and leave it in the house and keep the water cold and not worry about the filter.

You don't need a working one. I get mine off the dump  here is how I do it stays right outside never freezes.


This is the old way I used to do it works great for cheap and I kept 500 in this.

[Roccus]

didn't mean to ignore you. appreciate your response. the tank is one of those 100 gal rubbermaid stock tanks. Had filter running for about 2 weeks prior to adding my 1st 2-3 dozen shiners.  A week later, got another few dz. Next week, went trapping local salt marsh creek for the mummichaugs.  loaded up with about 12 dz.
Did some research on Ich. if the fungus spores do not attach to host, it dies.
Would like to set tank up outdoors this year. wondering how you guys that keep your tanks outside  insulate it on the sides and on top as well as how do you keep the filter from freezing? I have a back deck that i can put it under.

there are several things you can do to keep them healthy and happy... first...establish a biological filter... this takes 4-6 weeks to establish.. longer at temps close  50... the de-nitrifying bacteria goes dormant  at temps below 50... so monitoring ammonia levels and water changes become important... I don't believe your fish contacted ich.. ich is a parasite that shows as white spots... the appearance of fuzz indicates a bacterial infection... most likely brought on by overcrowding and ammonia poisoning...

as  far as keeping the water open and flowing... you can buy a small pond heater that floats in the tank... they have an internal thermostat and turn on @ around 34 and off around 40... I use an external  control called a thermo cube... it is a plug in control that uses EXTERNAL temp. to turn off and on @ 32 and 35 ..they also can be run on a simple timer...if you want a little tighter temp tolerance

If you keep your bait outside... a simple toilet bowl type float in conjunction with a drain/overflow will allow you to do quick 10% water changes every few days.. in winter wrap the supply hose/pipe with heat tape to keep from freezing...