How many minnows?

[Allday]

I am in process of building some way to keep bait and wondering how many minnows per gallon of water can you keep alive. Anyone got any ideas?

[Festus_Haggen]

I'm no expert on the technicalities of this, but I have a 22 gallons Rubbermaid tub. I fill it within 5" of the top, don't know exactly how many gallons of water is in it, but I've never kept over 6 or 7 dozen at a time in there.

If you give the fish some cover, such as broken clay pots and rocks to hide under, they will live much longer. I noticed without cover, I'd get at least one or two dead minnows a day. Now I only get one dead minnow every 4-5 days. I bought an old cheap aereator at Walmart, I know there's a better setup than this, but after the weather gets into the mid to upper 80's I'm gonna move these to the basement. It's difficult to find minnows in my neck of the woods without driving 20 miles, so I try to keep a few in stock. On hot days I'll throw in a gallon milk jug full of ice in there, jug and all, let it melt completely then put it back into the freezer, if I feel it needs cooled again, I'll throw anyother one in there.

I run the aereator about 1/3 of the time and feed them oatmeal. I keep another tub next to the full one, and when it comes time for a water change, I'll take out the rocks, siphon or slowly pour the stale water out, and transfer (dip net) them into the other tub. Make sure you transfer the rocks and clay pots to the new water first so the minnows will adapt to their new home first. I don't use a filter, and this takes a lot of work, but saves me driving 20-30 miles out of the way.

[buck_jackson75]

Follow the table below as a guideline.

Water Temperature - Pounds of Fish -Gallons of Water
55° Fahrenheit - 5 - 15
65° Fahrenheit - 5 - 20
75° Fahrenheit - 5 - 30
85° Fahrenheit - 5 - 50

[AgriHawg]

The general rule of thumb for aquariums is 1 gallon of water for every one inch of fish you have. Most minnows are about 2" long so in a 50 gallon tank you should only keep 25 minnows. Most everybody on here keeps a lot more than that in their tanks though.

[gabowman]

I keep two 55 gallon plastic drums and everytime I make a run for minnows I buy 2 lbs. of small minnows (approx 40-44 doz.) and split them between the two drums. Now that the temps are in the lower 80's and night time temps in the 60's I am swapping out ice jugs (gal. milk jugs) daily to help keep the water cool. I also use the aeriators bought at Walmart. About once a week I swap out about half the water in each drum from the well.

[Ken Jones]

Why live minnows? Learn to fish with Crappie Tubes. Sounds like a lot of extra work to me. Are you Crappie fishing, Bass fishing. Festus are you sir the TV star we use to watch on TV?

[rnvinc]

I went to my local bait store and asked the owner what he used in his bulk minnow tanks......He ordered me a jug of this.....



I don't have to change out my water half as often as I used to..

The gallon jug cost me $26 and it goes a LONG way.....3 years now and I haven't made a dent in it.....one little scoop in 5 gallons of water....

[creekslick]

I copied this from a post that Darryl Morris posted a couple years ago.

Here's a table that is a great help and a general guideline for regulating your minnow survival rate:

Water Temperature-Pounds of Fish-Gallons of Water
55° Fahrenheit 5 15
65° Fahrenheit 5 20
75° Fahrenheit 5 30
85° Fahrenheit 5 50