Keep minnows alive in minnow tank

Where I live it can be difficult to get minnows. One of the stores/bars is closed every Monday and most Tuesdays. Usually shuts down after snowmobile season until fishing opener in May. So I have tried to make my own minnow tank. Bought a 35 gallon heavy black plastic tank from L&M. Have a water filter installed and an aerator. I seem to have a high number of dead minnows each day. Usually buy minnows ever two weeks, so I would think they should last awhile. Tank is in a heated garage but the temp is kept around 55 degrees and the tank sits on the floor. Wondering if my filter (which they said should be good for a 50 gallon tank) is working or doing what it should. Anybody else try to keep minnows, and what kind of lucid do you have?

Maybe you don’t have enough bacteria in the tank. I know from having aquariums that you need weeks of time when making a new tank and adding additives to the water in my personal experience. Some small rocks on the bottom might help for that

What kind of minnows? I just throw fatheads in an ice cream pail in the fridge (or cool part of the basement in the winter) and have kept them for close to a month with few dead ones. Change the water every 5 days or so.

I had a huge Styrofoam cooler and was able to keep shiners alive. Lots of bubbles and very cool water. My aerator was a dual output and the stones were about 8″ long. A single tube with bubbles will not put enough oxygen back into the water.

Keeping a bait tank is a lot of work. You need clean cold water, city tap water won’t work. Most minnows from a bait store are already infected with disease. I trap minnows in the spring and they do good in a 100 gallon stock tank with a 500 gallon an hour pump pushing water through a bio filter. The minute I think I can put some minnows from a bait store in my tank it’s all over, fungus and disease spreads quickly. I would just do what others say and keep them in a bucket in the fridge and change water frequently.

Attachments:

1. 

   F76E1BE0-9664-42E3-9A96-BEBC1CAEF60B.jpeg
   

Are you using any clorine neutralizer? I live in city so need to dechlorinate my water. keep shiners for weeks you can get dechlorinator at any pet store and sometimes wal mart

The SCRATCHER wrote:

Are you using any clorine neutralizer? I live in city so need to dechlorinate my water. keep shiners for weeks you can get dechlorinator at any pet store and sometimes wal mart

Webbs water garden online is where I order my supplies. Pumps and chemicals and whatever you need.

I trapped a pile of em last thanksgiving and i still have not lost one single minnow. i use a 10 gallon aquarium which sits in my tuck under garage. it’s chilly in there at times but never cold enough to form ice. just use the white fluffy type of filter material and i change it out maybe once? i also feed the minnows flake style food since they are in there for so long. i use well water and dump fresh snow whenever levels start getting low. haven’t been to a bait shop in a decade or so.

Attachments:

1. 

   20211225_164507-scaled.jpg
   

Not sure if this works but I have a video of inside my tank . I’ve never been able to get a video to post though.

Thanks for the replies. To clarify I am on my own well. Water has been tested and is not hard, I don’t have any iron in the water and no water softener either. I use just one aerator with one 4” stone that produces the micro bubbles. Mostly just crappie minnows and a few sucker or shiners, no more than a dozen at a time of the suckers or shiners. Have never tried feeding them, so that may be an option. But if others have kept minnows in a bucket in the fridge, it would be nice to know if they fed them or not. Normally I have at the most a few dozen crappie minnows at one time, until they start dying off. I do try to fish at least 3-4 times a week so some of the minnows go from the tank to my bait bucket and what I don’t use I put back in the tank.

Adding plain salt can help lower stress levels and replace electrolytes. I too was having issues until I dumped in about 3/4 of a cup into my 55 gal aquarium. Since I started adding salt I have not had near the dead minnows I had before. It used to be that every fathead was dead within a week and now I loose a few the first few days. The strange thing is I only had problems with fatheads. I have kept leftover shiners alive for months without any issues. I’m assuming like was mentioned before that they come from the bait shop disease ridden.

Coletrain27 wrote:

Maybe you don’t have enough bacteria in the tank. I know from having aquariums that you need weeks of time when making a new tank and adding additives to the water in my personal experience. Some small rocks on the bottom might help for that

You shouldn’t need any bacteria in your tank. Put chlorine free water in your tank at a cool temperature and minnows should be good for quite a while if they have enough oxygen.

When I run a minnow tank I keep the water at 40. (I made a water chiller) Cold minnows use less oxygen.. and I have a massive oversized bubbler. I actually saw what they were using at fish lake bait for their storage tanks and bought one for my 100 gal stock tank. I’d try colder water and more aerator.

Keep em colder. I just run Engle coolers, change half their water every 2 to 3 days from a well. I rotate outside to inside based on ice amount in the cooler.
I use an aquarium bubbler with the ball stone that comes with the cooler.

Get a couple goldfish. They will help put good bacteria in the filter menus and keep the water healthy

popcorn wrote:

Adding plain salt can help lower stress levels and replace electrolytes. I too was having issues until I dumped in about 3/4 of a cup into my 55 gal aquarium. Since I started adding salt I have not had near the dead minnows I had before. It used to be that every fathead was dead within a week and now I loose a few the first few days. The strange thing is I only had problems with fatheads. I have kept leftover shiners alive for months without any issues. I’m assuming like was mentioned before that they come from the bait shop disease ridden.

Have seen the same thing myself this winter, get a scoop of fatheads plus a dozen shiners and a week later I’m at less than half my fatheads but have lost maybe 1-2 shiners, glad I’m not the only one who had this happen.

I’m just using a 5 gallon bucket and fish tank supplies from PetSmart, dragging back and forth from uninsulated garage to basement bathroom as needed. Have had success going about three weeks each batch this way and I call it a win. Keeping them cold, under 50 degrees, is the best way I’ve found. Hope this helps, good luck.

It is important to temper the minnows when putting in to the tank . A rapid change in temp can shock minnows. Feeding them will also cause problems with water quality as the foods breaks down in the water or fish sh$t. We have goldfish from our garden pond that we winter over every year and the don’t eat when the temp is below 55 deg, they go in the tank in late October and stay there till early May with zero food

Good bacteria makes a big difference. If you have a buddy with a healthy fish tank. Fill up half a solo cup with the rock from his tank and place it into yours. You can leave the rock in the solo cup to make cleaning easer. Add that to what was listed above and report back.

I also trap my own retails and creek clubs along with buying my other minnows. I keep them in an unheated garage in a 50 gallon aquarium with about 10 gallons of water in the winter, more in the summer. I run 2 small bubbles and Bird bath heater in it, still have retails and chubs from last summer trapping. It seems to work really good. I do feed them every couple of days gold fish flakes from Wal-Mart. Maybe have 4 dozen max at a time. I use city water.

I guess I’ve been doing it all wrong for the past 50 years. I’ve never put any good bacteria in my minnow’s water to help keep them alive. What is this good bacteria that some of you talk about?
Just keeping their water cold, clean and aerated has always kept my minnows alive as long as I’ve ever wanted to keep them.

Karry Kyllo wrote:

Just keeping their water cold, clean and aerated has always kept my minnows alive as long as I’ve ever wanted to keep them.

If you’re running some type of filter, the bacteria facilitate the breakdown of waste products. If you frequently change your water, it’s not necessary as the water changes remove waste products. Also, cold water slows the metabolism so less waste is produced.

you could try keeping them covered with little light penetration. mine sit in the dark for days….maybe that will help?

I kept 2 coolers full of fatheads alive from Sept- April a few years ago just using city hose water and cheap plug in bubblers. Cold side of garage had to take ice out on occasion. Dont think many at all died.

Ralph Wiggum wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Karry Kyllo wrote:</div>
Just keeping their water cold, clean and aerated has always kept my minnows alive as long as I’ve ever wanted to keep them.

If you’re running some type of filter, the bacteria facilitate the breakdown of waste products. If you frequently change your water, it’s not necessary as the water changes remove waste products. Also, cold water slows the metabolism so less waste is produced.

That makes sense.

Hi. Approx what temperature would you say the water is? And how many can you keep in a 10 gallon tank? I am a wildlife rehabber and want to keep live minnows for when I get birds that eat minnows. Sometimes I have no minnow eaters, sometimes I have a lot and live fish always gets them eating better than frozen minnows. THANKS!

I have found changing out 25-40% of the water every few days is much easier than trying to play aqua biologist with filters and bacteria and ph. Lots of bubbles and fresh cold water. Done

get aquarium salt or kosher, keep them cold and keep it dark no food needed. change the water but make sure the temp of what your adding matches the rest of the water-fast changes in temp of even a few degrees is a killer. You can set it up like an aquarium but that is a whole other deal.

Just look up Keep Alive systems, learn it, and put in an oxygen system. I could transport 5 gallons of shiners in a 20 gallon garbage can 100+ miles and loose 6 or 7 minnows. At home in the garage they lasted months.