building my very first bait tank need help

[tehburninator]

woo hoo! so... after much deliberation and the wet dreams of gay WSB and darting yellows and leaping dorados and an occasional change of underwear and sheets..........

scroll to the bottom for my question, or entertain yourself with my build

i caved in... the mechanic in me and my idle hands got the best of me...... i went a slightly different route then some of the tanks ive seen though

for example, instead of using a milk crate, i used a plastic crate from walmart i got a while back... it was my dog's toy box but she doesnt understand the concept of it so it was put away.... looks just like a milk crate, just inches smaller and much lighter due to lack of size and thickness of plastic, still have room for pvc pipe rod holders one in each corner, with the back two angled outwards for any attempt at trolling.. also adds a little upwards rigidity.

for the tank itself, i used a 3.5 gal bucket. the reason being the height. it's the same diameter as a 5 gal bucket, just much shorter, think... milk crate height, this will give me a little less height to reach over when grabbing fresh bait. though i am going to have to use a small hole in the lid, due to spilling and sloshing issues, i think i'll live.. the intake from the pump is a 3/4in and so is the exhaust, running the exhaust about 4 inches from the top of the tank and the intake aboust 2 in from the bottom of the bucket with a 90 elbow to direct water in a counter clockwise flow

for the pump im running a attwood 500gph tsunami pump... seems like a bit overkill for the tank to me, but i had a hard time locating the 360 that i was gonna run on a 6v... either way the 500 will be run on a 6v battery anyhow... now... i can do electrical rigging.. but im not too familiar with the pumps and their power input needed from the battery..... and im using just a sterlite locking tupperware for my battery box.

so question is... to run this 500gph pump on a 6v battery.... what ah rating am i shooting for?!!?!??! and where did you guys purchase your batteries besides from oex, nothing against them, just dont feel like driving through mission beach to get to them with traffic and all -.- actually stopped by the one in OS yesterday and they were closed... im a fail haha

i'll post pictures later on when i get some more work done to it

any other comments or ideas are more then welcome!!! thanks a bunch in advance

p.s. this set up so far is super super lightweight, i think it should be able to hold about 8-10 sardines comfortably enough for at least 8 hours