Maybe it's not the minnow bucket but the water instead. What type of water did you put into the minnow bucket. Did you use tap water? Not all tap water is the same. Some may have high pH and others may have a lower pH.
If the water you put in the minnow bucket differents in pH from that were the minnows were purchased from ( Bait shops water) then that could cause the minnows to die. Also temp changes can kill the minnows. If you get the minnows at the bait shop and their water temp is 60 deg F and you put the minnows in a bait bucket with 80 deg F water it may kill some of the minnows.
If you think that there may be some biological life in the minnow bucket that is killing the minnows then you may use a 10% bleach solution and clean the minnow bucket with that soln. Use 10ml of bleach to 100 milliters of clean water to make the solution. Or one gallon of bleach to a ten gallons of water. What ever amount of bleach you use just use ten times as much water to dilute it to make the 10% bleach soln. This 10% bleach solution should kill any bacterial that is in the minnow bucket.
After letting the bleach soln set in the minnow bucket for approx 10 to 15 minutes you should be able to just rinse the minnow bucket out with fresh water for several minutes and then let it dry out overnight. It should be ready to go the next day.
But I would make sure that you check out your water that you use to put in the minnow bucket and compare it to the bait shops water.
The bait shop ads that blue stuff in their water to keep their minnows alive longer. They would not be in business very long if all their minnows died all the time. That blue stuff changes their water's chemistry to make it better for their minnows. You might ask the bait shop owner if he can sell some of that stuff to you or ask him where he gets his blue stuff.
Key things to worry about when it comes to your bait buckets water.
Temp
Disolved Oxygen
pH
Alkalinity
Hardness
Cholramines
Ammonia
Nitrate and Nitrites.
Excessive Ammonia can kill the minnows. Now think about this. Each minnow has to go to the bathroom (NUMBER ONE) several times a day. If you have 4 dozen minnows that can add up in a hurry. Ammonia is found in the fish's urine. Bacterial an gravel bed in an aquairium can eat the ammonia and turn it into nitratites and eventually nitrates. But you bait bucket does not have any gravel filter or good nitrite or ammonia eating bacterial so the Ammonia builds up to TOXIC levels in the minnow buckets water. Only way to eleminate the ammonia build up is to change the water or treat the water with chemicals that bind or chemically alter the Ammonia. That is there the blue stuff comes in.
Also some water may have heavy concentrations of LEAD dissolved in the water. Lead is a heavey metal and it's toxic in large concentrations to humans and animals including fish. Where does that lead come from? Well some cities used lead pipes to distribute the water to homes. Some homes have lead pipes as well. Some pipes may not be made out of lead but they the copper pipes were soldered together with lead based solder. The lead can disolved (leach) out into the tap water overnight and at times there can be huge amounts of dissolved lead in the water. A lot depends on the type of pipes and the pH of the water. Low pH water can disolved more lead out as lead disolves in acid more than in a basic solution. Remember that acid can eat up a metal and lead is a metal substance.
Hope this helps your minnow live longer.
What I like to do is get a 10 gallon aquarium and install a underwater gravel filter in the aquarium and then put about 2" of gravel on top of the filter bed at the bottom of the aquarium. I add a power filter to the underwater gravel filters tubes. This draws the water downward though the gravel and up though the plastic 1" diameter by 8" high tube into the power filter head and then the water is mixed with air and sprayed back out into surface of the aquarium's water. I also have another filter that pumps water out of the aquarium and then though a charcoal filter before it's put back into the aquarium. I use a 20gal to 30 gallon filter for this. I keep the aquarium water at around 78 deg during the summer. During the winter time I have a 100 watt heater that I use to control the water's temp. During the winter time I keep the water at 78 deg also. The aquarium is inside an air conditioned house where I keep the temp at around 74 to 78 degs.
Originally Posted by bella