DIY bait cooler

I made this last year , made a few changes this year to it. Pump is like four watts mostly 1/2 inch cpvc and a piece of two inch pvc with some fittings from home Cheapo for the filter. Filter is stuffed with pillow batting from Walmart and some activated carbon. Over eight hours and water remains clean with over four dozen minnows , I’m sure a lot longer. The pump is a mag drive, no brushes so produces no heat. Runs off my starter battery but have run it for hours off an old vexlar battery.

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pretty cool! Nice work

i dig it. What size cooler did you use there?

I’m not sure about the size. It’s the smallest one at Walmart in that style, it probably holds around five gallons of water if you filled it to the top. Ok just found out its a twenty five qt.

Thanks Bob, my wife says it looks like a bomb

That thing looks sweet!

That’s awesome Gino! I would love to try this but to keep minnows at home. I don’t like making an extra stop if I get that urge to go and it’s kind of fun seeing what kind of minnows I can trap. So far I ain’t as lucky as you but creek chubs are pretty easy to come by for me.
Any idea how long you think they would last if in a cool place? Usually I just put an aerator in a 5 gallon bucket but need to change water every day. Any idea how long do you think before needing to change the batting if you just kept them at home?

Eyeguy507 ; I really don’t know how well it would work for that . I use it in my boat and when I’m done i pour them back in my big tank that has a way better filter system. I would replace a gallon or two every day to be safe. I changed the filter on this once last year half way through summer and it was pretty gross and that’s just using it maybe thirty hours a week.

eyeguy507 wrote:

That’s awesome Gino! I would love to try this but to keep minnows at home. I don’t like making an extra stop if I get that urge to go and it’s kind of fun seeing what kind of minnows I can trap. So far I ain’t as lucky as you but creek chubs are pretty easy to come by for me.
Any idea how long you think they would last if in a cool place? Usually I just put an aerator in a 5 gallon bucket but need to change water every day. Any idea how long do you think before needing to change the batting if you just kept them at home?

Why do you change water everyday? I’ve found that water is good for 3-4 days at least – I’ve gone up to 10 days. I keep my extra minnows in a bucket in the fridge with no aeration and they live a few weeks. I pull tap water and let it sit for 2-3 days and then just cycle that through. Seems to me sometimes the minnows thrive in some pretty gross water.

That’s true minnows metabolism slow drastically in cold water and require less oxygen. The minnows I keep would not fit in my fridge. When you keep them out doors and the water is warm you need to have a lot of dissolved oxygen and keep the water clean or they will start getting diseases and die. Also cold minnows dunked into a warm lake can die from temperature shock and when that happens they are not a very active minnow, but to each his own

Yeah – agreed on keeping them outside. I was referring more to keeping them for long periods of time.

We have a helluva time when we go to Canada in June/July on a fly in keeping minnows alive. Bringing a bait cooler is tough because of the extra weight. I think we should probably keep them in the fridge and then pull them out and let the temp stabilize.