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Over the weekend we had some minnows die over nite in our CoolBubbles Bucket . We had changed water that day ,left aereator on day & nite. Can i use bleach to clean the old blue color from bait shop out . Then maybe neutralize it with baking soda. What are ya'lls thoughts about what i should do . Thanks Leo
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bella
Before leaving to buy minnows, I put 2 ice cube trays of ice into my bucket, and then let the bait store put in their water and the minnows that I'm purchasing. I use a styrofoam minnow bucket. The other thing is, that I never purchase more than 2 dozen at one time, although with small minnows, you usually end up with twice as many, unless they are counting them. If buying very many, I think that you should use more than one bucket. Have been thinking about using an insulated lunch bucket and putting in an ice pack. The cooler the water, the longer the minnows live. Also using ice in the bucket as it melts it releases oxygen back into the water. Keith
The colder the water the more disolved oxygen it can contain. If you heat the water it drives the oxygen out of the water. So cooling the water in the minow bucket will let more oxygen disolve into the water. Also cool water will slow the minnows metabolism down and there may be less fish waste produced and excreted into the water.
Careful with adding too much ice as the ice may contain chlorine and that may harm the fish. If the water that is used to make the ice is full of chlorine atoms then at the ice melts it could release chlorine back into the minnow bucket.
I like the idea of not putting too many minnows in one bucket.
I purchased 4 dozen minnows last time and I made the mistake of not putting them immediately into my minnow aquarium. I left them in the minnow bucket for a couple of hours and about 16 minnows died before I looked into the bucket. After that about 6 more died in my aquarium. So I paid for 4 dozen minnows and ended up only with 2.5 dozen left. That was a waste of money and minnows. And my crappie refuse to eat a dead minnow. They will inhale it and immediately spit it back out and not touch it again. Now they will eat three live minnows in a row sometimes when they are really hungry. I have let them go for a couple of days without food and then I dumped about a dozen minnows in the aquarium. The one black crappie and the biggest white crappie will go ape and eat three minnows in a row so fast that the other crappie don't have time to get any minnows. The others have to wait until the agressive crappies get full. Sometimes the agressive crappie can be seen with two minnow heads sticking out of their mouths. LOL
Quote:
Originally Posted by S10CHEVY
Thanks guy's. I bought the minnows & drove about 1 hr to lake. Put them in bucketthey were fine . About 5 doz in 3 gal water styrofoam bucket with large stone 12v power on pump on all the time .went out on lake emtied all blue water out put in lake water at 7pm fished till 1am went in all was fine. got up at 6am all dead never happened in 3 years doing the same thing . Thanks Leo
I am fortunate, in that living in the country, we have our own well water. Could never put up with city water. They do have systems now to put in large chest coolers, to help keep minnows living longer. An air pump is included in the kit. I know they have them in the catalogs, and think Wally-World has them too. A 48 quart cooler would certainly hold more minnows that a bucket. Keith
[B]I use these little refreezable gizmos from wal-mart. They are the type that you put in lunchbuckets and igloo coolers. These are a little bit smaller than my hand. They are about and inch thick, about three inches wide and about five inches tall. They work very well in a frabill plastic and styrofoam minnow bucket, plus you don't have to worry about the difference in water and chlorine and all that other junk. Just my two cents worth. Take care.
Quote:
Originally Posted by S10CHEVY
:D Minnows are going through their Spawn cycles right now. This can cause them to die very easily if their environment changes too rapidly.
The thing that works best for me is to use a large (brand new to start with)double handled sized cooler that would hold about 48 loose pop/beer cans or more. I then take a 450GPM pump, and connect PVC pipe pieces to it. These connected pieces trace the 3 sides of the cooler bottom, and then go upright at the corner closest to the pump. I attach another pipe to this with little slots cut in it just below where the lid of the cooler can fully shut. This acts as a spray head to aerrate the cooler once the pump is attached to a battery. Then, just add buckets of bait shop water to this when you buy your minnows. If you keep the lid closed as much as possible, and just remove small svcoops of minnows for you small "users" bucket, they should stay alive without changing water for about 3 days. I just add a sealed container with ice in it in hot weather to keep the water cooler. <,"}>{ Rippa
Also remember to always use a aireater to replenish oxygen in the water otherwise they will die sooner