For growing plants inside tank - Get 4" PVC pipe drill small holes in it, cap the bottom, drill holes in that also. Hang inside tank & place plants inside pipe.
I will preface this with : "I'm Autistic and I am not super crazy smart". Baring that in mind... This was by miles, far and away, the best singular video I've seen on this topic and I've watched multiple of them. Most of these are done by kind of redneck guys and I can use that word because I'm a 4th generation Texan, so it's not like the N word for rednecks good it's like a black person using the word "nigga" when speaking to another black person. Anywho, I'm also dirt poor and I have 470 lb of rescue dogs on the regular that I need to feed and an occasional 50 or 100 lb or sometimes 20 lb will drop by to get fixed up medically, get neutered or spayed and trained and prepared to find its new "forever home". Because it is the most cost-effective and by Far and Away the most nutritious option available, I make homemade dog food fresh each and every day. My go to is chicken liver because organ meat is the most digestible and has the highest amount of proteins but I have to come up with 15 to 20 lb each and every day compared so even chicken liver gets expensive chicken liver gets expensive over a month, over a year, over a decade. I always take my two Great Pyrenees my 165 lb male, Loki and my 105 lb female, vor, (the Nordic Godess of calmness and patience and wisdom). I live close to Lake Conroe in Montgomery, Texas. The store closest to my house the corner store, which is a Circle K, is located directly on the lake, on Lakefront property. It has a dock that extends into the lake with two gas pumps where they sell fuel for boats. So every night when I go to the store I take the Pyrenees with me to get them out of the house. They are housebound for 4 months out of the year because it's so freaking hot here. They are rescues I would never go out and buy a Great Pyrenees to live in Texas! At least this way they are alive. I have tried several times to rehome them up north via Facebook with no success success. Anyway, we were down there one night on the dock and a young man was fishing with a casting net fermentos for bait and when he brought it up and Swap all the fish onto the dock my male Great Pyrenees immediately went for them and gobbled up a half a dozen. After a few minutes the young man offered him more (I am very old for an autistic person. I am 57. Our life expectancy lies somewhere between 37 and 54 years of age. With suicide being the number 2 killer of my community. This, statistically speaking, normally transpires somewhere in the fifties. As we are only 1% of the population there is no funding for research to determine the why of that? My personal opinion, it's because when you hit a 50 you know enough to look back and see how ridiculously hard and impoverished your life has been and so you know what lies ahead and this has been your condition for 50 years and it will remain as such. We have an 85% unemployment rate which is largely to blame for our impoverishment. It is due holy to discrimination did people do not like difference and will do anything to avoid being around different come up whatever that entails, regardless of our abilities or our intellect or education even. But I digress ( one of my co-morbidities is severe ADHD. I frequently get "off track", sorry). So anyway, that event gave me the idea to look into perhaps divising some type of minnow breeding and maintenance (would they need to be separate?) tank or tanks that I could produce around 4 to 6 lb of food with, fish in this case, each and every day (24/7/365)? Would such a thing be possible? And if so, how much would start up cost to be and would it actually do as intended and provide me with very, very low cost protein for my rescues? And if you are as smart as you most certainly appear to be, the ultimate question is, after set up costs have been absorbed, what would my price per pound of minnows be? And to what degree of certainty do we know this? As the teachers in public school would say just before a math test: "please show your work". Also, because of the ADHD I never remember to go check the response to any and all comments that I leave on TH-cam. It would be Capital if you could, if you would be so kind as to, please send me an email at me an email at: Stephanvonwolf@gmail.com ? Thank you for your time! And Kudos on you most excellent, professional grade video production. Best of luck in all of your future endeavors! Stephan von Wolf 832-512-6527
Oh... and i "liked" and subscribed! 😊 Excellent work! Actually, the best, most useful and "user friendly" work I have found to date, after much research on this very topic.
😂😆 All I know is somebody gave me something at the gas station and then I realized 3 days later I was still there fishing haha.. Nahhh I don't mess around with anything like that for real but I was there way too long and I was super tired but kept getting energy whenever a fish would bite.
Thanks for the Great videos! I finished mine a few weeks ago and it's going pretty good. One thing I'm working on is getting it to drain faster. I am using 1 1/2" pipe. I thought about putting a vent hole in the top of the drain line to help it drain faster, but I haven't quite yet. One thing I do is when I pull minnows to take to the lake I use my bottom drain hose to fill my minnow bucket. That way there's no temp changes and they have that bacteria.
😱 Now I know why I had so much trouble with the fish I tried to keep as "bait fish" Thank You for the info, I'll save your video for when I set up my tank for next year cause we do a lot of fishing so we can have fish for winter to eat, so this was a big help,.
@@CatfishKC No not yet but thank you for the info are you still using the same setup for the tank ? I'm using a 110 gal stock tank for goldfish for now that I've had for the past 2-3 years but fixing to get rid of them & just use the tank for aquatic plant's.
I know people to just get rid of their fish and go to plants. They can be fun too. Yes I still have the same 275 gallon IBC tote but I just changed the Substrate in the filter to about 5 inches of sand and it really seems to be doing good. Happy 2023!!
Use pvc pipe, the roots grow down but the fish can’t reach it. You could also use a fish breed basket where fry would be placed. The fish can’t get in but you have water flow
plant in basket with pool noodle ziptide to it and put pea graval, floting planter will let the roots grow some before they get a chance to eat them. really nice build though i really like.
Very helpful video bro!!! I almost did a ditto of yours . I filled mine today but having a small problem regulating the water levels between the fish tank and bio filter?
Do you have water coming from the top of the tank (kind of like skimming the top) and also the gravity fed water coming through the bottom. I find it is hard to regulate the amount of water coming from the tank with only the gravity fed supply coming from the bottom of the tank. With the skimming hole at the top, you can fill the tank as much as you want and the water will drain down that top hole making it easy to fill the filter as much as you need.
PH . add PH level to the additions to the water . PH level needs to be 7.2 no more then 8 no less then 6 . i just use ph strips for testing .this will allow meds and other chems to stay in the water have you tried dry dog food . one thing i do is take a piece of 4 inch pipe a couple of ft long drill one inch holes all around it and cap one end . attach it to the inlet . this will allow the debrea to be removed without bothering the fish .
I appreciate the information and I will do a little more research on the dog food. it's very interesting and we appreciate you watching and I'll let you know how it goes
This is something that we have been trying to implement as our plants grow. with my setup, as opposed to Nick's, is in the garage and I am limited on light. so I might need to get a light setup in my actual filter. I might implement this and I appreciate you watching and the suggestion as well
Nitrates excellent setup. Add 40 lb of sand in the bottom of your tote and you'll increase your biofilter bacteria by a magnitude that's just unmeasurable
@@CatfishKC only way to remove nitrates is to do water changes or have live plants that consume it. Biological filtration only converts ammonia to nitrite and nitrite to nitrate.
@@raptorshawn This is true!!! Either beef up your plants and your tank to equalize out how many fish you have or how often you feed. Or do water changes once or twice a week. I'd rather have a good amount of plants but that sometimes doesn't work for people as fast. I had to do a lot of water changes at first but, now my plants seem to take care of a lot of the issues.
About how many bluegills will tank like that support I also added a kind of like an overflow tank 14 gallon barrel and putting plants in that thanks good video
Oh nice! I've had over 100 in here and if you have enough biomedia and balanced correctly the filter can keep up for the most part. You would probably need to do more regular water changes. BUT, if you had enough plants in the ecosystem it would be pretty self sustaining assuming the plants could pull all the nitrates out. When you get into that many fish and have regular feeding you really need a good amount of plants to keep up.
This is Matt and I keep my tank in my garage. It stays about around 70 in my garage and I'll actually have to put a heater in the water during the winter. Nick has his tank downstairs in his house and it stays around 65 to 70 year round and he still uses heaters most of the time. It just depends where you keep your tank. If it's outside I've seen people spraying the entire outside with spray insulation.
It's going to be unavoidable for the most part if it's in direct sunlight. You can continually scrub the sides but a bit of algae isn't really going to hurt the fish. They might even feed on it if it gets aggressive... You could wrap the outside of the tote with black fabric and cover the top but if there's direct sunlight getting in it will promote algae growth.
I've had up to 140 or so in that tank. It all depends on your water quality and if you have a good filtration and good bacteria set up. Sometimes it takes 6 months to get the water just right to were your nitrites and nitrates (ammonia) levels are stable. Alot of times having plants growing in the water will also help a lot with the ammonia levels. With a tank this size and good water quality, 4-6 inch trout, you could easily have 60 to 80. That's just a guess. I'm not familiar with keeping trout. I'd like to have some in there.
Sorry for the late response..Both me and Nick use the concentrated "Safe" and now that our heaters are on, I add about 10 gallons to the tank about every 10 days which helps and keeps new water coming in without having to do partial water changes.
I have a 2" net pot and cut out a few spokes in the bottom and insertit in there. Allows the debris to go through but the fish don't get stuck and not big enough for them to get through.
That's awesome man! Be sure you get the bio filter set up good and you shouldn't have too many issues! If you don't want to wait the 6 weeks for nitrogen cycle to take place you can always get some used filter media from a friend or even go down to the local pet store and they might give you a sponge filter or somethings that's used and so you can get a jumpstart on the beneficial bacteria. *Did you do anything different to your setup?*
@@CatfishKC yes, but we have primarily the same set up in ways. I built mine just before finding your video. If you have a few minutes, swing over to our channel and check it out. Let me know what you think and your opinions on what could be better etc. thanks man!
Niceeeee. It's looking good. Looks like you have plenty of aeration in there. You might even be good without that agitator because your 5 gal has a good distance to travel with the run off and that would aerate your tank just fine, depending on the amount of fish you keep in there at any given time. One thing I might consider would be to get an additional pump at the bottom, maybe a 220gph or something small, just so you can create some movement down there for the particulates to get sucked up the pond pump. But it looks nice! Good work on that!
Nice build man! I used to be deep into the aquarium scene and i can tell you did all your homework instead of just having a holding tank🤙🏻 You can use your top that you cut to make a overflowing tank into your main tank, and use the shallow tank as your plant filtration and even grass shrimp if you wanted to
I really appreciate it man!! We thought when we started building these bait tanks that we'd be good just to get the chlorine and chloramine and watch the ammonia levels.... We were wrong Hahaha. We learned alot through trial and error. It's a little more complex like your saying. And thanks for the tip. That's a pretty good idea that I might play around with.!!!
Yeah i know your deal! Trust me!🤣 i jumped into aquariums the same way. And lost alot of money due to me not researching. Once you actually research and learn about the whole water filtration deal it becomes quite simple and you can easily keep things in check and prevent tragic losses with simple extra steps. I miss it and your build may actually give me reason into doing something like yours! Good luck and keep up the good info🙌🏻
@@kengravoisjr7728 exactly. We jumped in and we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. It kind of became an obsession for a little bit. And then more research and more research. But once we got it down, our fish started thriving and plants did good. It's not too difficult. But it does take some research. But at the end of the day it is really fun
You mention Salt. 5lbs per 200 gallons. but i wasn't sure if this was a saltwater tank setup or freshwater. Can you specify for me. looking at setting up a Bait tank gold fish, minnow, tilapia, etc. ... i have well water. is there a ph level specific you are trying to hit.?
Sorry for the late response. We only use salt every once in awhile. These are freshwater tanks and recently we haven't been adding sea salt. And with the ph level, that might be specific to what fish you have. We mainly pay attention to Ammonia/Nitrate levels to make sure the bio filter is working and also the tank isn't too crowded. Thanks for watching!!
Amazon has some good choices for larger tanks like this. I would personally only use a heater if you have your tank in a room that stays very cold. Our water is usually around 65 or 70
Unfortunately using rainwater alone won't eliminate the nitrates. You can use sand in the bottom of your bio filter and it will help to eliminate the nitrates. Plants in the tank as well. I rarely do a water change anymore. If I do it's usually 2+ months in between and it usually has more to do with smell and cleanliness since my tank is in my basement.
If you used rainwater I believe you'd be just fine with the quality of course. I would still check with just a test strip or two to make sure you're good. All we really use is an RV water filter to get the chlorine out of our tap and when I add water if it's just a bucket or two I leave it sitting out for 24 hours or so that way the chlorine and other things can evaporate out.
I have not used salt in my tank in a long time. It's a pretty drastic measure if you're seeing a lot of ick or that type of sickness going around to your other fish. I've seen salt work on fish that were sick but, I don't add it anymore. I have a netting in my water that holds a lot of my roots in, but some of the roots do grow through the net and the fish tend to leave those alone as long as I'm feeding them a little bit every couple of days. With using rainwater, the quality is going to probably be just perfect. The issue of water quality after that depends on your filter, you're good bacteria and media in your filter and also really just depends on your ammonia levels being taken care of as well. Rainwater can go bad with fish dying or being left in the tank or a filter not doing its job. So it's just good to always test the water quality and make decisions from that.
@CatfishKC thank you again for all of your help. For some reason, I will get one fish that looks like it has some sores for lack of better terminology. Eventually, it will die. I remove it as soon as I can after it dies. Within a few days, I notice a new fish getting the same type of sores. Just trying to figure out what is going on. Again, thank you.
How long does the water need to sit in the bio filter for the bacteria to grow and the water to be bacteria less again? Will continuous circulation make the water clean enough and give the water enough time to be clean? Do we need to use UV sterilizer in this setup? If not, Why not?
It might take 4-6 weeks before you get some beneficial bacteria growing on the substrates in the filter. At least enough where you won’t have to worry about the ammonia levels killing the fish. The UV light should be fine as long as you don’t put it in the filter where all the beneficial bacteria sits and grows on the substrate.
If you have your system set up correctly and have the good bacteria and t also some plants to help with the ammonia, usually a partial water change is all you might need.
Pothos seem to be the most popular and what we use but, there are alot of good plants out there you can use. You will need some light or you can even use water plants.
Hey Sherry. We've thought about different solutions and the mesh bag with some rocks actually sounds like a great idea. The fish haven't been eating the roots as much but, your idea would help protect them and keep the plants growing. We'll consider this and we appreciate the feedback and you watching!!
Hey Billy. We went to Home Depot here in town and we were able to get these parts. If there is a specific one you're trying to find, I'll look back and see if we had to order anything special. I don't remember having to.
If you watch Part 2 of the bait tank set up starting at 21:50 it should give a better explanation. If you want to make a venturi you'll need a good flow of water against a tube (the end of the tip cut at a 45° angle and the pointy end pointed against the flow of water) or something similar that will create suction to pull that air through and place that (however your setup is designed) near the end of the outflow or where there is the most water pressure. You will have to play with the placement of the air tube down in the water pipe. Just move it up and down in small increments until a good flow of air and bubbles start to enter in the water. The other alternative is to buy a irrigation venturi that will do all this for you and usually has flow adjustments.
I actually did not use anything. I opened the valve halfway to allow water to flow in but no fish get caught even if they die. If your fish are much smaller you can use some small chicken wire or some small galvanized metal with 1/2 openings at least.
After running them for a couple years, Nick's filter and system are great and we are always open to simple it up. My system (Matt) I might try your suggestions and try something a little more simple and see if I'm over doing it. These tanks have kept almost a hundred fish alive for years. But, I am open to try something different and see if it's an easier solution. Thanks for watching and the suggestions
That's what I use sometimes but I did find out there's a chemical breakdown in water softener salt and it kind of dissipates after a period of time unlike sea salt which I recommend more. You can get sea salt cheap at Costco! It's about $2 for almost 2 lbs
@@CatfishKC I've only done basically temporary bait tanks using old plastic cooler, aerator, and small aquarium filter last summer just getting into this sort of thing. Keep them for a couple of weeks (bluegill), and it required a lot of changing water over. Definitely not a long-term set up. For the salt, I got a 40 lb bag of pool salt for $12 (I'm in KC area too (Gardner), but don't remember exact place). Last year was very rough season, so hopefully this one coming will be better.
You have too many leaves on the plant. Strip them all off exect for a the top and submermerge the rest of it in the water to just below the leaves.. Roots will form where the leaves where
You can use a hanging flower pot to put the root ends in. It protects the roots from the fish eating them.
For growing plants inside tank - Get 4" PVC pipe drill small holes in it, cap the bottom, drill holes in that also. Hang inside tank & place plants inside pipe.
That's a good idea. I'll try that on the side of my tank with some of the pothos I'm growing..
I will preface this with : "I'm Autistic and I am not super crazy smart". Baring that in mind...
This was by miles, far and away, the best singular video I've seen on this topic and I've watched multiple of them. Most of these are done by kind of redneck guys and I can use that word because I'm a 4th generation Texan, so it's not like the N word for rednecks good it's like a black person using the word "nigga" when speaking to another black person. Anywho, I'm also dirt poor and I have 470 lb of rescue dogs on the regular that I need to feed and an occasional 50 or 100 lb or sometimes 20 lb will drop by to get fixed up medically, get neutered or spayed and trained and prepared to find its new "forever home". Because it is the most cost-effective and by Far and Away the most nutritious option available, I make homemade dog food fresh each and every day. My go to is chicken liver because organ meat is the most digestible and has the highest amount of proteins but I have to come up with 15 to 20 lb each and every day compared so even chicken liver gets expensive chicken liver gets expensive over a month, over a year, over a decade.
I always take my two Great Pyrenees my 165 lb male, Loki and my 105 lb female, vor, (the Nordic Godess of calmness and patience and wisdom). I live close to Lake Conroe in Montgomery, Texas. The store closest to my house the corner store, which is a Circle K, is located directly on the lake, on Lakefront property. It has a dock that extends into the lake with two gas pumps where they sell fuel for boats. So every night when I go to the store I take the Pyrenees with me to get them out of the house. They are housebound for 4 months out of the year because it's so freaking hot here. They are rescues I would never go out and buy a Great Pyrenees to live in Texas! At least this way they are alive. I have tried several times to rehome them up north via Facebook with no success success. Anyway, we were down there one night on the dock and a young man was fishing with a casting net fermentos for bait and when he brought it up and Swap all the fish onto the dock my male Great Pyrenees immediately went for them and gobbled up a half a dozen. After a few minutes the young man offered him more (I am very old for an autistic person. I am 57. Our life expectancy lies somewhere between 37 and 54 years of age. With suicide being the number 2 killer of my community. This, statistically speaking, normally transpires somewhere in the fifties. As we are only 1% of the population there is no funding for research to determine the why of that? My personal opinion, it's because when you hit a 50 you know enough to look back and see how ridiculously hard and impoverished your life has been and so you know what lies ahead and this has been your condition for 50 years and it will remain as such. We have an 85% unemployment rate which is largely to blame for our impoverishment. It is due holy to discrimination did people do not like difference and will do anything to avoid being around different come up whatever that entails, regardless of our abilities or our intellect or education even. But I digress ( one of my co-morbidities is severe ADHD. I frequently get "off track", sorry).
So anyway, that event gave me the idea to look into perhaps divising some type of minnow breeding and maintenance (would they need to be separate?) tank or tanks that I could produce around 4 to 6 lb of food with, fish in this case, each and every day (24/7/365)? Would such a thing be possible? And if so, how much would start up cost to be and would it actually do as intended and provide me with very, very low cost protein for my rescues? And if you are as smart as you most certainly appear to be, the ultimate question is, after set up costs have been absorbed, what would my price per pound of minnows be? And to what degree of certainty do we know this? As the teachers in public school would say just before a math test: "please show your work".
Also, because of the ADHD I never remember to go check the response to any and all comments that I leave on TH-cam. It would be Capital if you could, if you would be so kind as to, please send me an email at me an email at:
Stephanvonwolf@gmail.com ?
Thank you for your time! And Kudos on you most excellent, professional grade video production. Best of luck in all of your future endeavors!
Stephan von Wolf
832-512-6527
Oh... and i "liked" and subscribed! 😊
Excellent work! Actually, the best, most useful and "user friendly" work I have found to date, after much research on this very topic.
Thanks for that!! Nick did a great job explaining how our tanks work. It's not as easy as some think
My boys pupils are in beast mode 😂😂😂😂😂
😂😆 All I know is somebody gave me something at the gas station and then I realized 3 days later I was still there fishing haha.. Nahhh I don't mess around with anything like that for real but I was there way too long and I was super tired but kept getting energy whenever a fish would bite.
@@CatfishKC bahahaha
Thanks for the Great videos! I finished mine a few weeks ago and it's going pretty good. One thing I'm working on is getting it to drain faster. I am using 1 1/2" pipe. I thought about putting a vent hole in the top of the drain line to help it drain faster, but I haven't quite yet. One thing I do is when I pull minnows to take to the lake I use my bottom drain hose to fill my minnow bucket. That way there's no temp changes and they have that bacteria.
You can also add duckweed to the top and it'll absolutely blow your mind how valuable it is and it's free
Oh good call. I need to get some of that giant duckweed and something to contain it in a fixed area.
Thanks for the suggestion!
😱 Now I know why I had so much trouble with the fish I tried to keep as "bait fish"
Thank You for the info, I'll save your video for when I set up my tank for next year
cause we do a lot of fishing so we can have fish for winter to eat, so this was a big
help,.
Sorry for the late response!! I'm glad it helped and hopefully you got your tank setup ok. Thank for watching!!
@@CatfishKC No not yet but thank you for the info
are you still using the same setup for the tank ?
I'm using a 110 gal stock tank for goldfish for now
that I've had for the past 2-3 years but fixing to
get rid of them & just use the tank for aquatic plant's.
I know people to just get rid of their fish and go to plants. They can be fun too.
Yes I still have the same 275 gallon IBC tote but I just changed the Substrate in the filter to about 5 inches of sand and it really seems to be doing good.
Happy 2023!!
Use pvc pipe, the roots grow down but the fish can’t reach it. You could also use a fish breed basket where fry would be placed. The fish can’t get in but you have water flow
Hey now that's a good idea! I like the fish breed basket idea. Might have to try that! Thanks!
@@CatfishKC awesome! Hope it works!
That's what I was gonna say haha PVC pipe with holes drilled in it
plant in basket with pool noodle ziptide to it and put pea graval, floting planter will let the roots grow some before they get a chance to eat them. really nice build though i really like.
That's something I might try. To prevent them from getting to the roots. And thanks!!!
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for sharing! Just subbed!
We appreciate you and thanks for watching!!
Awesome page.
Thanks!! We appreciate it
Very helpful video bro!!!
I almost did a ditto of yours .
I filled mine today but having a small problem regulating the water levels between the fish tank and bio filter?
Do you have water coming from the top of the tank (kind of like skimming the top) and also the gravity fed water coming through the bottom. I find it is hard to regulate the amount of water coming from the tank with only the gravity fed supply coming from the bottom of the tank. With the skimming hole at the top, you can fill the tank as much as you want and the water will drain down that top hole making it easy to fill the filter as much as you need.
That slime film is detritus, add shrimp they will eat the detritus and they will double as snacks for the fish.
I've thought about adding shrimp and ya the fish would love them 😄... Thank for the info!!
PH . add PH level to the additions to the water . PH level needs to be 7.2 no more then 8 no less then 6 . i just use ph strips for testing .this will allow meds and other chems to stay in the water have you tried dry dog food . one thing i do is take a piece of 4 inch pipe a couple of ft long drill one inch holes all around it and cap one end . attach it to the inlet . this will allow the debrea to be removed without bothering the fish .
I appreciate the information and I will do a little more research on the dog food. it's very interesting and we appreciate you watching and I'll let you know how it goes
How many bags of rocks are in bottom of filter?
I believe it was just one bag 20 or 25lbs
Can't you grow the plants in the filter instead of the tank?? That way roots can develop.
This is something that we have been trying to implement as our plants grow. with my setup, as opposed to Nick's, is in the garage and I am limited on light. so I might need to get a light setup in my actual filter. I might implement this and I appreciate you watching and the suggestion as well
Nitrates excellent setup.
Add 40 lb of sand in the bottom of your tote and you'll increase your biofilter bacteria by a magnitude that's just unmeasurable
I was wondering about that recently! I actually will probably try that out here soon. But how much of the nitrates do you think it'll suck out?
@@CatfishKC only way to remove nitrates is to do water changes or have live plants that consume it. Biological filtration only converts ammonia to nitrite and nitrite to nitrate.
@@raptorshawn This is true!!! Either beef up your plants and your tank to equalize out how many fish you have or how often you feed. Or do water changes once or twice a week. I'd rather have a good amount of plants but that sometimes doesn't work for people as fast. I had to do a lot of water changes at first but, now my plants seem to take care of a lot of the issues.
About how many bluegills will tank like that support I also added a kind of like an overflow tank 14 gallon barrel and putting plants in that thanks good video
Oh nice! I've had over 100 in here and if you have enough biomedia and balanced correctly the filter can keep up for the most part. You would probably need to do more regular water changes. BUT, if you had enough plants in the ecosystem it would be pretty self sustaining assuming the plants could pull all the nitrates out. When you get into that many fish and have regular feeding you really need a good amount of plants to keep up.
@CATFISH KC HOW DO YOU KEEP THE WATER COOL ENOUGH? Thank you
This is Matt and I keep my tank in my garage. It stays about around 70 in my garage and I'll actually have to put a heater in the water during the winter.
Nick has his tank downstairs in his house and it stays around 65 to 70 year round and he still uses heaters most of the time. It just depends where you keep your tank. If it's outside I've seen people spraying the entire outside with spray insulation.
I made one and its working well! I have mine outside. Its starting to turn green. Any idea what to do to control think issue?? It is in the sun a bit.
It's going to be unavoidable for the most part if it's in direct sunlight. You can continually scrub the sides but a bit of algae isn't really going to hurt the fish. They might even feed on it if it gets aggressive...
You could wrap the outside of the tote with black fabric and cover the top but if there's direct sunlight getting in it will promote algae growth.
@@CatfishKC OK thanks!
HOW MANY FISH IN YOUR TANK AND HOW MANY 4 TO 6 INCH TROUT WOULD IT ALLOW ME WITH THIS SET UP
I've had up to 140 or so in that tank. It all depends on your water quality and if you have a good filtration and good bacteria set up. Sometimes it takes 6 months to get the water just right to were your nitrites and nitrates (ammonia) levels are stable. Alot of times having plants growing in the water will also help a lot with the ammonia levels. With a tank this size and good water quality, 4-6 inch trout, you could easily have 60 to 80. That's just a guess. I'm not familiar with keeping trout. I'd like to have some in there.
What kind of water conditioner do you use? My catfish are dropping like flies & I need help bad.
Sorry for the late response..Both me and Nick use the concentrated "Safe" and now that our heaters are on, I add about 10 gallons to the tank about every 10 days which helps and keeps new water coming in without having to do partial water changes.
Question: I have almost the same setup. How do you block off the 2" ball valve at the bottom. My fish keep getting stuck and messes up my flow.
I have a 2" net pot and cut out a few spokes in the bottom and insertit in there. Allows the debris to go through but the fish don't get stuck and not big enough for them to get through.
@@CatfishKC Thanks so much. Love your videos.
Where did you get your pumas rock?
My local hardware store and I rinsed them off really good before I used them
This is such an awesome set up man! Just built mine a week ago.
That's awesome man! Be sure you get the bio filter set up good and you shouldn't have too many issues! If you don't want to wait the 6 weeks for nitrogen cycle to take place you can always get some used filter media from a friend or even go down to the local pet store and they might give you a sponge filter or somethings that's used and so you can get a jumpstart on the beneficial bacteria.
*Did you do anything different to your setup?*
@@CatfishKC yes, but we have primarily the same set up in ways. I built mine just before finding your video. If you have a few minutes, swing over to our channel and check it out. Let me know what you think and your opinions on what could be better etc. thanks man!
Niceeeee. It's looking good. Looks like you have plenty of aeration in there. You might even be good without that agitator because your 5 gal has a good distance to travel with the run off and that would aerate your tank just fine, depending on the amount of fish you keep in there at any given time.
One thing I might consider would be to get an additional pump at the bottom, maybe a 220gph or something small, just so you can create some movement down there for the particulates to get sucked up the pond pump.
But it looks nice! Good work on that!
Nice build man! I used to be deep into the aquarium scene and i can tell you did all your homework instead of just having a holding tank🤙🏻
You can use your top that you cut to make a overflowing tank into your main tank, and use the shallow tank as your plant filtration and even grass shrimp if you wanted to
I really appreciate it man!! We thought when we started building these bait tanks that we'd be good just to get the chlorine and chloramine and watch the ammonia levels.... We were wrong Hahaha. We learned alot through trial and error. It's a little more complex like your saying. And thanks for the tip. That's a pretty good idea that I might play around with.!!!
Yeah i know your deal! Trust me!🤣 i jumped into aquariums the same way. And lost alot of money due to me not researching. Once you actually research and learn about the whole water filtration deal it becomes quite simple and you can easily keep things in check and prevent tragic losses with simple extra steps. I miss it and your build may actually give me reason into doing something like yours! Good luck and keep up the good info🙌🏻
@@kengravoisjr7728 exactly. We jumped in and we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. It kind of became an obsession for a little bit. And then more research and more research. But once we got it down, our fish started thriving and plants did good. It's not too difficult. But it does take some research. But at the end of the day it is really fun
Exactly! Its an addiction for sure
You mention Salt. 5lbs per 200 gallons. but i wasn't sure if this was a saltwater tank setup or freshwater. Can you specify for me. looking at setting up a Bait tank gold fish, minnow, tilapia, etc. ... i have well water. is there a ph level specific you are trying to hit.?
Sorry for the late response. We only use salt every once in awhile. These are freshwater tanks and recently we haven't been adding sea salt. And with the ph level, that might be specific to what fish you have. We mainly pay attention to Ammonia/Nitrate levels to make sure the bio filter is working and also the tank isn't too crowded. Thanks for watching!!
Nice video man, what did you use for a water heater?
Amazon has some good choices for larger tanks like this. I would personally only use a heater if you have your tank in a room that stays very cold. Our water is usually around 65 or 70
If you use rain water for your tank, do you have to change out your water?
Also, do you still put salt into the water?
Unfortunately using rainwater alone won't eliminate the nitrates. You can use sand in the bottom of your bio filter and it will help to eliminate the nitrates. Plants in the tank as well. I rarely do a water change anymore. If I do it's usually 2+ months in between and it usually has more to do with smell and cleanliness since my tank is in my basement.
If you used rainwater I believe you'd be just fine with the quality of course. I would still check with just a test strip or two to make sure you're good. All we really use is an RV water filter to get the chlorine out of our tap and when I add water if it's just a bucket or two I leave it sitting out for 24 hours or so that way the chlorine and other things can evaporate out.
I have not used salt in my tank in a long time. It's a pretty drastic measure if you're seeing a lot of ick or that type of sickness going around to your other fish. I've seen salt work on fish that were sick but, I don't add it anymore. I have a netting in my water that holds a lot of my roots in, but some of the roots do grow through the net and the fish tend to leave those alone as long as I'm feeding them a little bit every couple of days. With using rainwater, the quality is going to probably be just perfect. The issue of water quality after that depends on your filter, you're good bacteria and media in your filter and also really just depends on your ammonia levels being taken care of as well. Rainwater can go bad with fish dying or being left in the tank or a filter not doing its job. So it's just good to always test the water quality and make decisions from that.
@CatfishKC thank you again for all of your help. For some reason, I will get one fish that looks like it has some sores for lack of better terminology. Eventually, it will die. I remove it as soon as I can after it dies. Within a few days, I notice a new fish getting the same type of sores. Just trying to figure out what is going on. Again, thank you.
How long does the water need to sit in the bio filter for the bacteria to grow and the water to be bacteria less again?
Will continuous circulation make the water clean enough and give the water enough time to be clean?
Do we need to use UV sterilizer in this setup? If not, Why not?
It might take 4-6 weeks before you get some beneficial bacteria growing on the substrates in the filter. At least enough where you won’t have to worry about the ammonia levels killing the fish.
The UV light should be fine as long as you don’t put it in the filter where all the beneficial bacteria sits and grows on the substrate.
How often do u add water conditioner?
If you have your system set up correctly and have the good bacteria and t
also some plants to help with the ammonia, usually a partial water change is all you might need.
So what kind of plant did u use?
Pothos seem to be the most popular and what we use but, there are alot of good plants out there you can use. You will need some light or you can even use water plants.
when you fill your tank with the rv filter do you run the water slow in the tank or just wide open so it wont take too long
I don't run the water slow. In between off and wide open is a good speed. The filters seem to be able to handle that.
Rock bass are toothless piranhas !!
Yeah they are ruthless!!
Put the plant in a mesh bag with some rocks so the fish can’t eat roots
Hey Sherry. We've thought about different solutions and the mesh bag with some rocks actually sounds like a great idea. The fish haven't been eating the roots as much but, your idea would help protect them and keep the plants growing. We'll consider this and we appreciate the feedback and you watching!!
Where can I get the parts you bought?. Thanks
Hey Billy. We went to Home Depot here in town and we were able to get these parts. If there is a specific one you're trying to find, I'll look back and see if we had to order anything special. I don't remember having to.
@@CatfishKC How do you set up the ventri tube and what pump was in the five gallon bucket. Thanks for all the help and advice.
If you watch Part 2 of the bait tank set up starting at 21:50 it should give a better explanation.
If you want to make a venturi you'll need a good flow of water against a tube (the end of the tip cut at a 45° angle and the pointy end pointed against the flow of water) or something similar that will create suction to pull that air through and place that (however your setup is designed) near the end of the outflow or where there is the most water pressure.
You will have to play with the placement of the air tube down in the water pipe. Just move it up and down in small increments until a good flow of air and bubbles start to enter in the water.
The other alternative is to buy a irrigation venturi that will do all this for you and usually has flow adjustments.
What did you use to cover the drain hole on the inside, great video I got it now. Thanks for a awesome video!!!.
I actually did not use anything. I opened the valve halfway to allow water to flow in but no fish get caught even if they die.
If your fish are much smaller you can use some small chicken wire or some small galvanized metal with 1/2 openings at least.
nice
The filtration system is to complicated. Just use some large sponge filters.
After running them for a couple years, Nick's filter and system are great and we are always open to simple it up. My system (Matt) I might try your suggestions and try something a little more simple and see if I'm over doing it. These tanks have kept almost a hundred fish alive for years. But, I am open to try something different and see if it's an easier solution. Thanks for watching and the suggestions
put the plant in a filter sock and hang it in the corner of your tank. or use pantyhose
@licha5050 Nice!! I might clip a section off and try that to start another side of the tank!!
How often do you feed your bait
Definitely try to feed them a couple times a week to keep the beneficial bacteria thriving.
Is it ok to use water salt ? I could weigh out five pounds?
Water Softener salt
That's what I use sometimes but I did find out there's a chemical breakdown in water softener salt and it kind of dissipates after a period of time unlike sea salt which I recommend more. You can get sea salt cheap at Costco! It's about $2 for almost 2 lbs
@@CatfishKC I've only done basically temporary bait tanks using old plastic cooler, aerator, and small aquarium filter last summer just getting into this sort of thing. Keep them for a couple of weeks (bluegill), and it required a lot of changing water over. Definitely not a long-term set up. For the salt, I got a 40 lb bag of pool salt for $12 (I'm in KC area too (Gardner), but don't remember exact place). Last year was very rough season, so hopefully this one coming will be better.
You have too many leaves on the plant. Strip them all off exect for a the top and submermerge the rest of it in the water to just below the leaves.. Roots will form where the leaves where
Sorry for the late response... But yes. I did take a lot of the leaves off to get some additional roots. Thanks!!
i didn't know people use Rock Bass as bait... lol
Hahaha. Ya we have had our own names for some of these fish since we were kids. I meant green sunfish haha
Pro's!
Ohhhh you know how we do
Use a 2 liter bottle as a root zone habitat drilled full of holes
Dude that's an awesome idea! I think that's the winner!