Louie;3481360; said:
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70s isn't the problem . Maybe going from cool water to 70s fairly fast might be the problem but not 70s as far as being to warm.
I keep over a dozen outside in full shade (one of those 60 gallon pvc "ponds")but regardless when temps here averaged 100 PLUS till recently for last 3 - 4 months and didn't lose a single fish .
I have had them awhile forgot exactly how long but easily over 6 months.
Your temp is not high. I imagine the temps for them in shade was at mid high 80s during day . We do get close to daily inches of pouring rain.
They are big for rosy reds and look great but have never bred and now that added 1 M-2 F Florida dollar sunfish . I don't suspect they will.
Hope your ready for a book lol
I should have already updated this thread with my new findings.
OK so after ready thru some info on the web about the (baitsaver) brand holding tanks that my local minnow spot holds theres in I found out that it takes cartridges as filter media in the side. And after further searching I found that these cartridges were carbon and a buffer for low PH.
So I had never checked the Ph of the water they were in because I had watched with my own eyes the guy filling these tanks with a water hose that was hooked to the same city water system as I used right down the road. And he even said ( I don't use any additives or anything. lol).
Well after checking I find out that the water in there holding tanks had a PH of 5.5-5.8. And our city water is close to a 8PH.

As the light bulb went off in my head and I started to feel like a complete dumb ass. Basically I had been PH shocking these fish for 5 years and suffering massive die offs with every pound of minnows that I bought. As well as the ammonium/ammonia or deal.
See the bait saver holders are set up to lower the Ph so that they do not have to have any sort of a biological filter. Once the Ph drops below a certain point all of the ammonia is converted to ammonium which is nontoxic to fish. And if you couple this with a low temp like they do (50's) the minnows will never experience any ammonia.
So these minnows I was bringing home in a bucket. Were in water that had 8.0+ ppm ammonium reading and a Ph of around 5.5ph with a temp of around 50ish degree's.
And once I started the drip acclamation I was raiseing the temperature which would then convert the the ammonium to toxic ammonia. So the fish were going from zero ammonia to 8ppm+ ammonia in about a hour. And this as you already know would kill the hardiest fish there is.
And that is not even considering the stress that the rising temp and Ph levels were causing on the minnows.
Well my last 3 batches since I figured this mystery out have went alot better. Out of the pound (360 minnows) I get around 25 or so dead thru the 2 week period before another batch is bought.
I will take 25 over 300 any day of the week,
