bai tanks

[Chris]

Looking for advice on bait tanks. I cut the lid off one of those blue plastic 55 gallon drums. I put a submersible pump in the tank on the bottom that pumps water up a short piece of garden hose and out a pair of standard garden hose spray nozzles. The spray nozzles are pointed at the suface of the water in the top of the tank. This creates a lot of bubbles all over the surface of the water. I also hung a filter system for a 50 gallon fish tank on the side. The tank is kept inside with room temperature around 75 degrees F. I feed the bait fish goldfish flakes from local pet store twice a day. I am trying to keep creek chubs and blue gills in the tank. It seems a few bait fish die everyday. I also notice that the chubs get lighter in color over time and they develop light colored spots in different places but very often around the face / head. Am I doing everything correctly? How long should you be able to keep baitfish with this setup? Any suggestions for improvements?

[Eyez]

I think you have a couple problems. You need to find a way to keep the water cooler. That temp water is hard on fish like creek chubs. Those kind of fish will live much better in water about 55-60 degrees than at 75. It kind of depends on how many fish you're trying to keep in there, but if they're packed in pretty tight, you need to flush the water through pretty fast, unless you're filtering the heck out of it. With a dense population you should be exchanging half that water every other day or so. The symptom you're describing sounds like ammonia poisoning and the fungus that grows on fish when their immune systems get weak due to high ammonia levels, which would be consistent with not flushing enough water.

The filter may make up for some of the water quality issue, and you might not have to change as much water if you're filtering it, but you'll still run into a problem with solid waste laying on the bottom of the tank if you don't vacuum it out somehow. I've never done it like this, but the idea I had was to use something that had a tapered (cone shaped) bottom, so all the solid waste would pile up in one spot, then have a high volume pump sitting in that spot, fire it up periodically, and it should pick up all the solid stuff, and pump a bunch of water out, then just top it off with non-chlorinated water.

Ideally though, go to a bait dealer, ask to snoop around at his tanks, and see how he's set up, and then build yourself a miniature version of it. I know this is a long post and I'm not an expert, just someone who spend a lot of time keeping tropical and temperate fish, who has a similar interest in bait tanks, and I hope it helps you some.


Eyez

[bestshot]

You need to build a bio-filter for your tank. For the filter media you can use lava rock the kind you put in your grill. Then go to your local pet store and buy some pond bacteria and put it in the filter. The bacteria will eat the ammonia and all other toxic waste. Takes about 2 weeks for the bacteria to settle into the lava rock. I have a very small lawn pond and this type filter works great. Do a web search for water gardens and lawn ponds. You will find out everything you need to know.