Minnow tank problems

[intruder_2015]

They are shiners and I actually thought about removing the 4 small ones cause they float up to the surface. The 4" stay at bottom. I'll remove the stones and get the water testing information tomorrow night or Saturday

[cricket george]

If you are going to use the 4 small ones then zip tie a sinker on each to get them to the bottom. They provide little value floating on top of the water. The 4" stones are allowing the air to rise from the deep water and the oxygen to transfer into the water. Shiners are fish that do better without alot of turbulence. One 4" stone may be sufficient for the minnows.

[bearclaw]

I have bee told you could use city/ county water IF you store it a few days in a drum or container with no lid,said the chlorine will evaporate .I don't know this for sure though.Has anyone done this?

[intruder_2015]

Yes that will work but I got additive to remove it.

[FishyFrank]

From my experience working on a fish farm a constant temperature in your minnow tank will help you greatly. We have flow through setups where water right out the well runs through the tank and flushes to the ditch usually maintaining a constant temperature. The ammonia usually spikes from the fish dying so keeping the minnows constantly picked is a necessity. Also I've never had much luck holding shiners for more than a couple weeks. Usually the fish we sell have only a two-week shelf life from the pond before you start dealing with die off. Shiners are also much more difficult because they are more sensitive than Fatheads.

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[cwright]

I have been keeping both crappie and 4-6 inch shiners in my basement all year for stripers and crappie. I built my tank out of a 275 gallon tote. I started out with 6 lbs total minnows and have been using them all winter. I am down to probably 15 or 20 large ones left. I only feed maybe once a week or sometimes less and do a few small water changes a week when I had them all in. Now I hardly do any water changes. They require much less food than you would think. Temp is the key as well. Mine stays in the low 60's. At the beginning I would lose 5-6 minnows every week, but once I used maybe half, the looses were very small. Lucky that I have very good spring water to use.