Bait Tank Aerator

Here's some added information on a way to mount the pump inside the tank and more info on salt.

First though, I can't stress the importance enough for bluecat, channelcat and flathead fishing of keeping bait alive for the duration of your fishing trip. Cutting shad from live shad is the absolute best bait there is other than other natural baits like skipjack, bluegill .. etc etc. Once you've made a good bait tank for keeping shad then your fishing is going to improve quite a bit as you won't need any other bait. Fishing for bluecat isn't a matter of trying to figure out what they're biting on because if you find the fish they're going to bite on fresh cut shad ... they won't turn it down, EVER! That's one of the main problems I see that most people have when they approach catfishing is they think the fish are always there ... they just need to figure out what they're biting on and that's never the case ... if you learn how to locate the bluecat then the only thing you have to do then is present the bait to them off bottom ... that's another mistake I see fishermen making is using carolina rigs and allowing the bait to settle into the mud or rocks where the fish can't get to it. Once you figure all these things out then you'll be further ahead than most and then all that's left is learning how to locate the fish. Keeping shad alive isn't all that difficult ... it doesn't require a round tank or any filtration but it does require you to use enough salt to prevent the rednose that the shad get. people think they get rednose because of the ice chest having square corners and that's not why they get it ... it's a hormone that builds up in them after they're caught and put in a tank that you have to counter and the only way to counter that is by adding salt to the water ... if you use an ice chest and you don't use enough salt the shad will get rednose and die ... not because the tank is an ice chest or not round but just because you haven't put enough salt in the water cause even in a round tank you can see the shad swimming continuously into the wall of the tank and if you don't put enough salt in the water even in a round tank then they're going to die. Might take a long time but this is the importance of using the salt ... salt softens the water so that the water aerates a lot better ... after you add enough salt to the water and use one of these pumps set up like the one below you can see a white cloud of water instead of big bubbles and this means the bubbles are being turned into microfine bubbles instead of big bubbles because you've used enough salt to soften the water so that the air and water can mix a lot more efficiently. the salt also helps the shad deal with cortosol hormone which is what causes them to bleed internally so the salt does several things for the shad. Below I'll show you how to make the aerator pump and also what kind of salt to get for the tank and how much to use. this is just a guideline as some water sources will require more salt than others so if you use this guideline and they get rednose after 3 or 4 hours in the tank then next time you know you'll need to add about 10% to 15% more salt per tank full.

In order to mount the pump inside the tank solid so that it's not floating around or getting out of position to deliver the optimum aeration into the water I took the little suction cups off the bottom of the base of the pump and used the existing holes and placed three 3/8ths nuts under the base, as spacers, so that they were under the screw holes where the suction cups were. then I used three stainless steel wood/metal screws and stuck in the holes so that they went down between the holes in each of the three nuts. these made ideal spacers so that the air hose wouldn't be squished and collapse preventing air from going through the hose. I screwed the screws directly into the tank. with the nuts under there it held the base of the pump off the bottom of the tank about 3/8ths of an inch.

Here, where the arrows are I drilled two 1/4" holes in the icechest to run the hose through and the electric wire so that they wouldn't be messed with when I opened the tank each time to put bluegill or whatever in the tank and also to remove them. with the pump mounted solid like this there's no chance of it pointing in the wrong direction. if you want you can also put a little section of 3/4" hose on the discharge to put the discharge flow down about two inches more so that the air is coming out right on bottom of the tank and the air will have to rise further to escape causing it to oxygenate the water just a little bit better.

Here in the next five photos you'll see how the salt works to help the aeration process. the salt is a water softener and allows the atomization of the water to be more severe. you can see just how cloudy the water looks in the next 5 photos ... I took several pictures of this with different camera settings so that you can see the effects of the clouding up of the water due to the super fine mist of bubbles. the bottom two photos show the aerator working without the salt in the water.

These next two pictures show what it looks like when you don't add salt to the water ... mostly all that comes out of the pump is big bubbles that don't aerate the water very well at all. I included these photos to show another reason, other than the salt helping the shad deal with cortasol and other stress hormones. The salt is a water softener that allows the air to atomize a lot better when agitated by the pump impeller mixing the water and air. If the water isn't soft enough then the air won't dissolve in the water very well at all.

aerator without salt in the water.