Bullhead question, What’s considered overcrowding?

I’m a bullhead keeping novice and need some insight from the catfisher-people.

I’ve got about 24 or so bullheads in a large cow tank outside. While life for them in this large tank is great, it’s a pain in the butt to keep changing that amount of water etc. I don’t get out catfishing much and I’m not going through them very fast, lol. They’re med to smaller sized bullies (4-5inch I suppose) and I’m wondering what size tank they could be moved into without ‘overcrowding’ them.

Is there a general rule of thumb for the amount of bullheads to gallons of water you want?

Thanks

I have a 100gal plastic tank
I have a 110gal aquarim filter and 2 12″ air stones in it
I have kept 120+ 5-7in bullies in it very well for 6-12 weeks
I only changed water 2 times in 3mo cleaned the filter 1 time a week
They lived great and all were used and stayed very lively

It will depend on your filtration & O2 & temperature. If you’ve got that covered and their slime coating is pretty much gone you can keep even more. I’d Take your gallons and multiply by .7 Somewhere near that formula has worked for me. I can probably even keep more but they get sluggish when there is too many. I should add I have really nice filtration so this probably wont work for everybody.

If you’re not keeping more than 24 or so bullheads at a time, a regular chest cooler is plenty big, mobile, and you can catch the fish back out of it easy. You can keep them in that indefinitely if you change out the water every 2 days and have a good aeration system. Putting in a frozen bottle of water every day is also a good idea – the colder the better for keeping any fish long term.

I’ve kepts baits alive for pretty extended periods in a 48 quart cooler like Matt suggested. Change about 1/2 of the water every day or two and you’re set with good aeration. If using a biological filter (sponge, etc) you could go longer between water changes.

post script: Was catching baits today for the next couple of short trips…below is a little before and after. The bucket shows the baits about 1.5 hours after I caught them. As you can see, they dirtied it up real good!

Next shot is after I transferred into fresh water in my 48 quart cooler. I just use conditioned tap water with Dechlor and some “stress coat.” The aerator is a power head from my old 20 gal aquarium. I just changed about 1/2 the water again. I’ve kept baits alive for weeks with regular water changes. The water changes are necessary to avoid ammonia build-up without some type of biological filtration.