Regarding "Frugal Fishkeeping"...

A recent post on the NANFA list mentioned a collapsable laundry hamper that could be used to store fish on the stream. As a Dollar General manager, I immediately knew what the item was. It costs...$1! If you can find one. Here are a couple of photos - collapsed and expanded.

That is a brilliant idea, especially if you have an outdoor pond and want to rear up some fry.

Wow, excellent idea. Now I need to find one.

This is indeed an excellent idea. I use a smaller version (diameter and depth of a 5 gallon bucket).
This will be very nice for holding fish (too big for a 5 gallon bucket) prior to photos.

Thanks

We all have them, lets see them!

You can see in the top photo a glimpse of "Irate's Improved Brails", which I will detail in the collecting gear forum. They kind of fall under frugal fishkeeping too since they can be used with multiple seines, but the initial cost is not terribly cheap. Stay tuned...

Plastic shoebox filled with floss. Holes drilled along bottom sides. 3/4 inch PVC pipe riser. Not pretty, but works great in tubs.

I have never tried it but I hear that you can use a bicycle wheel tube to power and airstone for a couple of hours at a time. All you do is fill up the innertube and attach the airline to the outlet on the innertube and it will slowly release air into the bucket/container. Great for power failures too...

Chad

Nice! I am sure that would work.

FRUGAL = good in my book

In the latest issue of American Currents I was erroneously credited with generating the laundry basket idea. IIRC, it was Ray Wolfe who first put the notion forth - I just took a picture of it.

After reading about this on NANFA a few months ago, I used it to collect fish. I didn't get anything other than large shiners or darters, but it did work.

After reading about this on NANFA a few months ago, I used it to collect fish. I didn't get anything other than large shiners or darters, but it did work.

This is awesome! If I find one it will most definetly be purchased.

I have never tried it but I hear that you can use a bicycle wheel tube to power and airstone for a couple of hours at a time. All you do is fill up the innertube and attach the airline to the outlet on the innertube and it will slowly release air into the bucket/container. Great for power failures too...
Chad

Or use your spare tire. A fraction of a century ago, the Germans used tires for their home tanks. Old VW Beetles used the spare tire to make the windshield washer fluid work.

In the latest issue of American Currents I was erroneously credited with generating the laundry basket idea. IIRC, it was Ray Wolfe who first put the notion forth - I just took a picture of it.

I think I might be able to lay claim to this idea, or perhaps someone else and I both came up with it independently... Here's my post from the mailing list back in 2006, including a few other ideas. I'll add a separate post with the ideas some other members contributed in that thread.

I'd love to see a "Frugal Fishkeeping" subforum show up at some point...

-Jase

Re: NANFA-L-- Frugal fish transporting and keeping - cheap
Jase Roberts (nanfa_list-in-jaseroberts.net)
Sun, 27 Aug 2006 13:44:36 -0400

Aha, this brings up a topic I wanted to start a while back -- fish keeping on the cheap. Maybe folks could offer suggestions and we can put together a compilation? Sure, some stuff you need to get from aquarium stores or other retailers. But a lot of supplies can be picked up *way* cheaper if they aren't specifically marketed as aquarium supplies.

I'll start with some examples:
- 4' fluorescent lights (to be used over a glass aquarium top) usually run $80-100 at aquarium stores. These are virtually identical to 4' "shop lights" that can be had for $8-12 at various discount stores.
- The filter pads that come with cheapo "over-the-side" filters are basically just polyster batting sewn in a rectangle. That batting runs about $2-3/yard at Jo-Anne or other fabric stores. Spend an hour or so with needle-and-thread (or try hot glue to do it much quicker), and you can make up enough to last a long time
- Dollar stores have all sorts of things that can be useful -- packs of suction cups for positioning air lines, kitchen basters for sucking up live foods. One that I've found to be particularly cool is a collapsible mesh laundry hamper that makes a great free-standing "corral" for fish while you're collecting.
- For aquariums where I don't have hoods, I've purchased "foam core" posterboard at dollar stores and cut it to fit. Give it a couple coats of spray paint, and it's waterproof.

Where else have folks found stuff that's useful to fishkeeping, but not specifically marketed as "aquarium supplies" (with the associated markup)?

-Jase

Here are the rest of the posts in that thread. Credit goes to the original authors.

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Re: NANFA-L-- Frugal fish transporting and keeping - cheap
Peter Unmack (peter.lists-in-)
Sun, 27 Aug 2006 14:02:57 -0500 (CDT)

On Sun, 27 Aug 2006, Jase Roberts wrote:

> Aha, this brings up a topic I wanted to start a while back -- fish
> keeping on the cheap.

The cheapest fish keepers I know are killifish people! Not that they are
cheap per se, but usually if I find those guys are most most knowledgable
about all kinds of good little tricks and stuff. I always search the
killfish email list archives for stuff I have questions about.

My cheap contributions are tubing for airlines, syphons and gravel from
Home Depot (the latter tends to be pretty dirty, but a couple days soaking
makes it easier to clean). Aquarium silicone is another (the GE Type I
stuff is what you use). We already discussed sodium thiosulphate for
chloromine removal. Fixing broken tanks is another. I'm always amazed at
what people are unwilling to easily fix. The standard filtration I used
is a goldfish bowl undergravel filter (<$3) in a gallon tub from Home
Depot or Walmart filled with gravel. Not very pretty, but cheap and very
efficient! I always scrounge the paint screw up bin for good colors for
painting fish tanks with (I like to paint the bottom, back and one side of
relatively bare tanks, the fish are much happier I find).

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Re: NANFA-L-- Frugal fish transporting and keeping - cheap
Derek Parr (derekparr-in-earthlink.net)
Sun, 27 Aug 2006 15:52:29 -0400

my turn ;]

My favorite bigtime money saver is using a layer of red clay from the
yard instead of laterite covered with sand/gravel from a nearby creek
(heavily rinsed and hosed off) for all my tank's substrate. It is free,
isn't that much trouble to rinse and works really well. And as a bonus,
I occasionally get some asian clams crawling around afterwords. For the
one or two tanks I have that aren't planted I leave out the clay. I
prefer using fertilization instead of a soil layer.

Of course, one can't exagerate the importance of supporting your local
fish club. I get a lot of great stuff for very little by donating to
the club at the monthly raffles. And all of the stuff is completely
free in my mind, since I want to support my club anyways.

As for filter media for those cheap hang on the side filters, I just jam
nearly any porous non-toxic material into them.. bio balls, filter
floss, sponges, etc. maybe strip the old padding off the plastic of the
filter pad that came with it and tie the floss/sponge on to it to keep
it from flowing in to the tank.

Also, battery operated air pumps for fish transport are much cheaper at
bait stores than at aquarium stores.

Of course, I don't see the point of buying driftwood... I mean, shoot,
the stuff grows on trees! ;]

The rest of my little tricks that I can think of are pretty common or
have already been mentioned.

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RE: NANFA-L-- Frugal fish transporting and keeping - cheap
Irate Mormon (archimedes-in-bayspringstel.net)
Mon, 28 Aug 2006 11:32:23 -0500

I scavenge stuff all the time. Recently at my store we had a lighting
upgrade - I appropriated all the old ballasts for future use (I build my
own light hoods). Too bad they weren't MH! I've come across boxes of
plate glass in my wanderings too. Sand and rocks are easily obtainable
at some of my collecting sites. Plants? Available in the wild.

Water pumps are a different story. I don't skimp on those - it isn't
worth it.

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RE: NANFA-L-- Frugal fish transporting and keeping - cheap
Nick Zarlinga (travis.c.haas-in-lawrence.edu)
Mon, 28 Aug 2006 19:46:17 -0500

Building your own aquariums is cheaper than buying them
new if you can't seem to find used tanks, and also a heck
of a lot of fun. I've pilfered scraps of countertop from
the dumpster behind a local cabinets and counters business
- the formica surface is waterproof and occasionally
pleasing as a tank background; I use the scraps in the
same way people build plywood tanks. Building all-glass
tanks from new glass isn't cost effective. The best
source of cheap thick plateglass comes in the form of the
tops of old coffee tables, frequently set on the curb for
the garbage man or at thrift stores.

Travis Haas
Fox River and Lake Winnebago
Apppleton, WI

I think I might be able to lay claim to this idea,

Yeah, OK, looks like you're right. Maybe you can get your name in A/C!

Here's a ghetto version I created 2 years ago from pvc. Brilliant idea on paper...but it has had some funny problems and I hav yet to successfully raise a batch of fry in it like I fantasized. Fry swimming over the edge, jumping out...finding their way under the double layered fabric...the pvc coming apart etc.


Perhaps some juvenile fish that cannot jump are in order if I break it out this year. I did keep a few blind cave tetras in it with success.

<a href="http://smg.photobuck...t=DSCN1653.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://img.photobuck...h/DSCN1653.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>



http://img.photobuck...sh/DSCN1653.jpg

Edited by critterguy, 06 March 2008 - 03:00 AM.

seems to me that if you made it taller and provided ballast offset from the top that your enclosure would float with the rim above the water to whatever height you need. Would stocking (nylon legging) mesh be fine enough to keep fry from escaping?

We finally got a couple of warmer days so the road shoulder finally dried up enough for me to collect some gravel. For those of you in snow/salt country you know that the rock salt has gravel and dirt in it. I have found that the stuff in my area is a nice dark gray color, with red and black interspersed, occasionally a quarts pebble or three. Really brings out the color is fish nicely.

1) swept up enough of the dirty gravel on the asphalt shoulder (between the white line and the edge of pavement) to fill the container shown below.

2) used a planting tray (black one that flowers came on from the nursery) and lined the inside with vinyl windo screening and sifted all of it.

3) saved the larger aggregate (moslty a fine gravel), thoroughly rinsed it and got enough to fill 1/2 of a 55 gal to 5 inches.

4) Rinsed the fines that passed throught the screening (took a while) and got rougly the same volume of coarse sand.

This all took me one hour and one beer.

pic 1: container I filled with swept-up gravel and the sieve I used
pic 2: washed fine gravel
pic 3: washed coarse sand (wet on left, dry on right)

Edited by scottefontay, 08 March 2008 - 09:30 AM.