[Eskimo]

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A home bait well is always a challenge, but it's great to always have some live bait on hand. It also allows you to keep fish the bait stores don't carry.

The challenge is keeping the fish from poisoning themselves on their own waste. Fish pee ammonia (NH3 and NH4+) which is very toxic to the fish. This isn't a big deal in a lake, but a dozen shiners in a 5 gallon bucket will eventually render their environment uninhabitable and die.

In an established fish tank with a constant population of fish, the aquarium and filter is populated with nitrifying bacteria that oxidize the toxic ammonia to nitrate (NO3-) which is basically non-toxic. These bacteria need a few weeks to reach a population that "eats" the ammonia as fast as the fish produce it. The bacteria reproduce slowly because that ammonia oxidation process doesn't yield a lot of energy for them to live off.

In a home bait well where the number of fish is always changing there is a lag between the time a load of fish is dropped into the tank and the time the bacteria can catch up and start consuming the waste fast enough to keep the fish alive.

Doing constant partial water changes will go a long towards keeping your bait fish alive. Also, remove dead and sick fish as soon as possible. A rotting carcass releases a tremendous amount of ammonia as the proteins in the fish break down.

There are a lot of other issues you'll run into like some fish don't like being in an aquarium and don't live long in there like herring. Some times the fish you buy are already sick and/or poisoned on their own waste. I've had that problem with fathead minnows I bought at a pet store.

Right now, I only have one 29-gallon aquarium (home bait tank) running which is almost empty. I just have some baby bullhead catfish in it to maintain a population of nitrifying bacteria. I'll start re-stocking it in the spring.

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