What battery charger do I need?

[sky hawk]

Despite searching for battery charger information both on this site and across the net, I am still unsure of what the best battery charger is for my needs. I was wondering if you guys can help.

I just completed a boat rebuild on a small 13' River Hawk boat. It is powered solely by a Minn Kota Traxxis transom mount motor. I have a large, 29 group battery that is 100ah or so, and due to weight balancing, I moved it to the front of the boat. So I purchased a small 12V 7ah battery (5 lbs.) to run my fishfinder in the back. If I can get one, I'd like to find a good all-around charger that will charge and maintain the large deep cycle battery as well as slow-charge the small battery. Is that possible? If so, which one would you get?

I am looking at a 15/10/2 amp charger, BUT the chargers that are made for the small 7ah batteries charge at 750-1000ma. If I charge them at the 2 amp rate will that be ok? Does anyone have any experience with those small batteries? Thanks.

[jimp]

I have a small 7ah battery (deer feeder battery) for powering the FF in my yak, and it came with a small compatible charger. I would get one of these from Gander Mtn, Academy sports, etc., where they sell the batteries. While they are not expensive, if you have to replace it a couple times, then it will get expensive and get a seperate charger appropriate for the TM battery.

[Cray]

What jimp said. Anything else is going to burn up that small battery. Check Cabelas also. The sometimes have the chargers on sale.

[Bricks]

Charging the group 29 depends on how often you fish if every day I would go at least a 10 amp if every other day a 5 will do nicely.

[sky hawk]

Thanks guys. I picked up the small battery from Bass Pro, and they had they had small chargers there that you could buy. I just thought if a single standard charger could also charge the smaller ones, I would just go with that. I wanted to see if that would work before I bought a separate one just for the smaller battery. I wasn't sure if 2A was small enough to work or if it since I found 1.1A chargers for those small batteries.

[storminyoung]

For what it's worth, I use 2 Gel Cell Deep cycles for my TM and a Traditional Flooded/Wet Cell for my starter batteries. I also have 2 of the smaller 12v Batteries for my lawn mowers. So instead of buying different chargers for each battery, I just bought a decent Schumacher one ( SSC-1500A: ) so I could charge whatever I hooked up to it without burning the battery up. Since I kept all the mowers and boat in my barn, it just made more sense for me. Going on 3 yrs. now with the same batteries and charger and no issues with any of them