Evolution of a Turd Tank:
For me, part of the fun of catfish season is managing bait and more importantly, messing with the bait tank. I know of a few fishing buddies that have conflicting opinions, but it’s a fun and messy part of summer I look forward to every year. Since the season is upon us, I figured I’d share a few photos. The photos are in chronological order as I experimented over the past 3 or 4 seasons. Maybe it can stimulate some ideas if you’re looking at building a similar contraption.
It started out simple, just 100-gal tank, a cheap 250-gph pond pump, a couple pales with sand and rock “media”, and a make shift spray header. This was a closed-loop, continuously running system. I had a bypass so I could divert flow to my lawn sprinkler if I felt the need to change water. I had some good growing grass in a few portions of the yard.
That worked for a season but I felt the need to change it yet again. This time I brought it into my garage where my boat sits and incorporated some scrap barrels I found in The River. I took the same filter buckets and made “turd screens” from leftover landscaping material. When densities where high I had to replace the fabric with new material weekly – fabric is cheap, and you don’t use much, so no heartache.
Again, I felt compelled to change. This time I wanted to grow some plants from fish turds. I saw sub-par success mostly due to the indoor tank and minimal sunlight to stimulate plant growth.
Lastly, I hauled the tank back outside and made a whole new growbed that floods/drains every 5-10 minutes with a simple siphon. The pump runs 24/7, the growbed floods to a point to fill a standpipe, then the growbed is suctioned dry. I was able to grow cucumbers and tomatoes, although the growth was extremely slow until late summer. Unfortunately, I don’t have any final pictures when it was flourishing green.
The last tank (outdoor with growbed) was great on my bait. I do not recall draining/cleaning the tank all summer. In fact, I had the same batch of bullheads from July – October with minimal mortalities (I didn’t get out much due to school). The fish were the healthiest I had ever seen! I fed them every couple days with some cheap sinking fish food from the store. It cost about $5/month to feed them. Now that the snow has melted from my yard, I plan on redeploying last years “aquaponic” setup with hopes to get some fish in early and get the turds flowing much sooner.
