the problem is not from the heat attleast directly the problem is with contaminated water from the fish waste down around 50 and below there metabalizim slows down and so does there production of waste so the trick is to keep the volume of waste in the water as low as possible there are 3 ways to do this and you can do them all for the best result
1 keep the water cool that way less waste is produced
2 have more water for the same number of fish
3 remove the waste thru water changes or biological/chemical filtration
heres what i do for long term staorage (i have a couple dozen from back in late feb still going stong and actualy growing) i have a 30 gal fish tank i run a pair of "penguin bio wheel 330" filters (
http://www.marineland.com/products/consumer/con_penguinfilters.asp) and change the charcol and amonia crystals about every 2 weeks or when the water starts to cloud i keep the water around 68-70 degrees and feed them goldfish flakes 2-3 times a day they fatten up nice and grow when ever i bring home left over bait from a trip i drop them in that when you see how much the last batch grew i also run a couple bublers i think i could get by with out them i had them so i run them. i do lose a few but not many
this is how i keep them going for several days like when on a week or longer trip
i carry the minnow in my regular minnow bucket to and from the lake or store but then for overnight or more i fill a good sized cooler chest with water i put some aquasafe water conditioner in the bottom of the chest then fill with the hose make sure you use enough doesnt seem like to much hurts it is like a spoonfull per 10 gallons
i use this to treat tap water when filling the chest or making water changes i get it at walmart
when the chest is full (no waiting time)i then dip the minnows out and put them in the chest they can stay a good 36 hours like that if you need to keep them longer then you need to change the water just treat some tap water in a bucket dip the minnows in to the bucket dump the cooler the refill using the water conditioner and dip the minnows back
depending on how many minnows and how big your chest the time will vary if the water starts to get a smell to it time to change it i also run the bubler in the chest
i have kept lots of shinners for well over a week with verualy no loss useing this method
some time i keep the chest full of water and put the minnows in there when im done fishing for the day then just put them back in my minnow bucket the next morning to go fishing if they are not in the chest during the day the water in the chest last longer also
i use the water conditioner whenever i buy bait just a couple drops in the bucket when i get out of the store cause it removes a lot of the waste and has things that are like stress reducers and helps there slime coat
im putting to gether a 200 gallon horse trough with cusom filters so i can start buying mi shiners buy the pound and get some of those 6" plus shinner that i cant seam to find
when i get it going ill post about it
hope this help a bit
