winter project

[tateman]

put the bait tank together for the house a few weeks back ;D put a timer and a water cooler on it, still working on the filter though, have some minnowes living in there now wanted to test it out before i tried to load it up pretty good. any thought on a good filter system.

[mwardncsu]

Nice!

[mytoyzfishing]

Looking good You going to put a lid on it to help with evaperation? For filtration if you could figure out a way to do an overflow into a sump filter, i would think would work good. At least that is what has worked the best on my 180 gal saltwater tank.

[tateman]

mytoyzfishing,
gonna put some plexy glass around the top with a frame and pianio hinge, it has a overflw now with a filter chamber. theres a dozen or so minnowes living in ther for about a week now and what i dintnt think about was all the waste from the bait that will lay on the botom? not sure how im gonna filter that? thinking about putting a drain on the bottom and doing the water chang that way and maybey collecting the waste that way? not sure the best way?

[grasscutter]

Just draining the water probably isn't gonna get much of the waste.... Probably need an aquarium vacuum ....with is basically a siphon hose to get the waste off the bottom ......

[mytoyzfishing]

Like grasscutter mentioned, an aquarium vacuum will work good They can be found at pretty much any petstore. Also something that we used to do when I had the saltwater tank was to use a couple of power heads on the sides to keep the water circulating within the tank. This eliminated any problems with crud settling to the bottom.

[BentRod]

What type of bait are you going to keep in it? Shad are nasty and will crap more than you can imagine. Minnows are nothing in comparison. I wouldn't personally want to have to suck all of that crap out all the time. The power head idea may work to keep it stirred up enough that the filter can work. In a round tank, the crap always tends to gather in the center. On many of the good home tanks I've seen, the intake to the filter will be put in the middle of the tank so that it sucks all of that crap up. With your tank being square, I'm not sure how the crap will settle.

[catsnstripers]

IS that inside your house??

[mytoyzfishing]

Bentrod you make a good point. Now that I think of it the Local Saltwater Fish store I used to go to had a LARGE square holding tank and he had built the overflow in the center of the tank. If you put a power head at different levels in the tank and make sure you have enough circulation through out the water column it will stay stirred up good, but placement of the power heads is key.

[tateman]

wanting to be able to keep some shad from week to week, the minnows are there just to see if they would gather in the corners,since the tank is square, test dummies . and my point exactly! if the minnows put out that much the shad would have 10 times that? do you think if i put two 500 gph caddy cornered pushing towards each other with one intake at the top an one in the middle?

catsnstripers,
i have it in a utility room in the basement, gonna move it to the building in a week or so, used to be a sink in the corner so i hooked the water and the drain up to that so i could drain and refill wile i m trying to get it figured out. didn't want to freeze the pipes before i got the bugs worked out.

[BentRod]

Round is always best, but in a tank that big, I doubt you'll have much trouble unless you're putting a ton of gizzards in there at once. How many gallons is it?

Do you have a picture of the filter set-up? Here's a couple pictures I found of my friend's tank..the first shows the intake in the center of the tank. The bigger one is the drain for water changes..it's in the middle also..to be sure and suck the crap out too. The other is the intake to the filter. The second picture is of his simple homemade filter. That water is pumped back into the tank with a Dannco venturi.




Here's a shot of my old filter set-up. I just put a pump in the center of my tank and pumped water up to a filter and then it drained back into the tank. It worked ok.


Also, are you on well or city water? If you have the ability to do partial water changes, you should be able to keep gizzards alive pretty well regardless of the filter. But you probably don't wanna be running a 100gal+ of water a day.

[tateman]

re piped the tank, changed to a bigger pump and used 1 1/2 pipe to replace the 3/4, what a difference 8-)you cant really see the water moving in the video that well but it filtered the hole tank in about 30 minutes.now just need to hook the cooler back up and make the frame for the plexy glass in the top.

[mytoyzfishing]

Looking good. If you dont mind me asking what all parts did you use and where did you find them? Im toying with putting a tank in my garage to keep bait since I dont live water front.