Free/Cheap 55G Barrels for Home Bait Tank?

Anyone have any leads or connections on these? Or even a better idea?

If you have room, a plastic kiddy pool would work awesome. Use a bilge pump to change out the water as needed.

Make sure you know what was in them.

If I didn’t have a water loving dog I’d have one in the garage all winter.

It’d be easy to see the minnows and clean out the dead ones since it’s shallow and has a light colored bottom.

Instead I use a 5 gallon Gatorade pail with a small fish tank bubbler. I can only keep so many minnows and have to change the water every few days since it’s so small (4 gallons of water).

Another idea would be a utility/laundry sink. Free on Craigslist, but even new they’re cheap. You could plumb the drain right outside to change water (would obviously need a screen over the hole).

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I keep minnows in the garage in a cooler with a bubbler. Can keep them alive for weeks in the winter. Just need to change out the water every 3 or 4 days. Summer I do the same just put frozen bottles of water and swap those out twice a day.

Check Craigslist. I see them listed for $5 each near me in Rochester, says they held either Antifreeze or Window wash.

https://rmn.craigslist.org/for/d/rochester-55-gallon-plastic-barrel/6736832601.html

Here is a listing in Hopkins for $20

https://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/for/d/hopkins-55-gallon-plastic-barrels-food/6780299367.html

I use a wash tub in my garage in the winter it has a small fountain pump pushing through a eight gallon homemade bio filter. My big one in the summer is a 110 gallon stock tank with a 500 gallon an hour pump through a 18 gallon bio filter, they both work very well if you keep them clean.

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munchy wrote:

Check Craigslist. I see them listed for $5 each near me in Rochester, says they held either Antifreeze or Window wash.

https://rmn.craigslist.org/for/d/rochester-55-gallon-plastic-barrel/6736832601.html

Here is a listing in Hopkins for $20

https://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/for/d/hopkins-55-gallon-plastic-barrels-food/6780299367.html

Thanks Munchy

B-man wrote:

If you have room, a plastic kiddy pool would work awesome. Use a bilge pump to change out the water as needed.

Bman While I like this idea, my wife is already going to give me the look when she finds out I have bait living in our garage. The least I can do is try and take up as little space as I can. When she sees her car moved out of the garage for a kiddie pool I might be moved out of the house shortly after.

crappie55369 wrote:

I keep minnows in the garage in a cooler with a bubbler. Can keep them alive for weeks in the winter. Just need to change out the water every 3 or 4 days.

I do the same. I have a coleman cooler/ bigger lunch box and drilled a hole in top put the bubbler hose threw and made my own bait cooler.

I trap my own minnows so I might go a little overboard. The minnows I fished with on Monday were from July. I’ve gone months without losing a minnow.

Gino can you explain your “bio filter.” We seine spottails in the spring. We use a old chest freezer with a pump anda home water filter but they plug up pretty quickly. Thanks.

You can get 55 gallon plastic drums free at the creamery in Ellsworth WI. Get there about 11:30 am and get yourself a bag of cheese curds warm and fresh out of the vat. Thank me later. They don’t come out until 11:30 though.

Sometimes they have 30 gallon drums.

You’ll have to wash them with soap first but worth it.

Red eye, A biological filter breaks down fish waste and toxic ammonia from minnows breathing, and going to the bathroom in the water. You can see hundreds of homemade ones on u tube. Most of them have the water gravity fed through them top to bottom, mine I like to push the water through from the bottom. I use 3/4 pvc from my pump through a bulkhead available at home depot into my tank. Then I used a t fitting with two 45 elbows and created a swirling effect in the filter with is a tote also from home Depot. First is a layer of plastic scrub pads and scrunchys from the dollar store than a layer of them foam things you put in your gutters to keep the leaves out, they work really good cut to fit and they kind of stack together. Next I put a layer of cotton batting from Walmart from the craft department for a final layer. I take activated carbon and make little packs of it to throw on top before the water is returned back to the tank through another bulkhead.

Old water softener tanks work great also if you can find a broken one…

If you want to run to Rochester I have a white plastic 55 gallon barrel without the top. Freebie if you want it. I’m on the north side so easy in, easy out.

I used it for a garage trash can but always used a heavy liner bag.

BoatsHateMe wrote:

You can get 55 gallon plastic drums free at the creamery in Ellsworth WI. Get there about 11:30 am and get yourself a bag of cheese curds warm and fresh out of the vat. Thank me later. They don’t come out until 11:30 though.

Sometimes they have 30 gallon drums.

You’ll have to wash them with soap first but worth it.

What color are they, if you know? Trying to avoid white. I think I may go this route. The fresh cheese curds my have pushed me over the edge.

mahtofire14 wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>BoatsHateMe wrote:</div>
You can get 55 gallon plastic drums free at the creamery in Ellsworth WI. Get there about 11:30 am and get yourself a bag of cheese curds warm and fresh out of the vat. Thank me later. They don’t come out until 11:30 though.

Sometimes they have 30 gallon drums.

You’ll have to wash them with soap first but worth it.

What color are they, if you know? Trying to avoid white. I think I may go this route. The fresh cheese curds my have pushed me over the edge.

They have white and blue

mahtofire14 wrote:

Anyone have any leads or connections on these? Or even a better idea?

You could build a box to the size you want and line it with thick poly(don’t laugh poly will work just fine) or go to a landscape supply and buy pond liner, though there is the expense of materials.

Gino wrote:

I use a wash tub in my garage in the winter it has a small fountain pump pushing through a eight gallon homemade bio filter. My big one in the summer is a 110 gallon stock tank with a 500 gallon an hour pump through a 18 gallon bio filter, they both work very well if you keep them clean.

Nice system,
This is mine I use aggregate for my filter. The second tank is for leaches.
I like the roundness of tanks, especially for shiners. Shiners spook easy and with round sides, they are less likely to bang themselves off the sides and kill themselves.
I may build a rectangle box with separate compartments(for the ends I figure I can bend some thin plywood to make the curve eliminating the corners) and do the liner thing this spring.
With the white containers, the minnows tend to bleach themselves especially the shiners.
One year someone wanted to use my tanks for their bullheads and put them in with the minnows. Man those bullheads grew fast.

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