My New Minnow Tank

[Andy1270]

I decided at the beginning of February to take on a project of building my own minnow tank. This is because I'm not near any bait stores, and often times after driving the distance, I've found them to be out of minnows.

After much research on the topic I understood the main concerns are temperature, filtration, and aeration. I used our 10 year old chest freezer and an old swimming pool pump/filter for the project. Of course I had to buy the fittings, hose, etc. I also used Methylene blue for the water after conditioning with Prime to remove the chlorine.

One of the big concerns was avoiding the condensor/evaporator lines, so I used a temperature sensor and pencil to carefully note their locations (based on readings). That was critical since I wanted to hook up a Johnson Control unit to overide the freezer thermostat and keep the water around 51-55 degrees always. I also added a separate aeration line with an air stone at the bottom of the tank. I wasn't sure if the spray bar alone was going to be enough.

Here's what I came up with and it's been running for 1 week now with 4 dozen starter minnows. I'll include links to many of the project pictures too.

Please share your thoughts and ideas!

Here's a link to more project pictures on my SmugMug account:

Project Minnow Tank - kanderson's Photos

Happy Crappie fishing!

[WKUs Final Approach]

That's pretty sweet!!

[F1race79]

Keep us posted on this project!!!!!!!!

[short grub]

that looks great

I dont know how many minners you plan to keep at any one time but if its going to be alot you might want to change the hole size on your spray bar to alittle smaller to get more oxygen in the water i know you have a bubble stone in the bottom just my .02 cents

i have the same frezzer out in the garage its dead and i was thinkin about what to do with it lol

again thats a great idea

[Shug87]

That a neat idead andy looks good

[olduckhunter]

how bout naming the parts for dummies like me and where to get them. i got a freezer that needs to have minners in too. what kind of pump? etc?

[Eager Beaver]

I have thought of doing this with our freezer when it quits working. The problem with this is it's been working for around 45 years and still running like the energizer bunny. May have to give it a little tender loving care. EB

[hollidas]

Nice! Looks great!

[dkb23]

Very cool!

[thunderstick]

Me and my Dad build one just like that years ago! it worked pretty good until the for some odd reason the minows would die after about a week!