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Cutlips Minnows


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#1 Guest_butch_*

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Posted 15 September 2013 - 11:06 AM

Anyone has some experiences with keeping these minnows?

#2 Guest_keepnatives_*

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Posted 15 September 2013 - 01:16 PM

I kept them many years ago. Very hardy took flake food readily as well as anything else. Breeding condition males were surprisingly attractive with a gray body covered with silvery specks. One word of warning beware of keeping them with fish with colorful eyes as they will and are amazingly good at plucking eyes out of other fish. I had it occur with central stonerollers more then once in my tanks and found a couple sites in the wild where both occurred and most stonerollers were missing an eye.

#3 Guest_Kanus_*

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Posted 15 September 2013 - 02:23 PM

I have kept a few of them. I've never had any experiences with them taking out eyes, but one thing noteworthy about them is their snail-eradication potential. I had a 2.5 inch individual almost entirely rid my 75 gallon of snails over a few months, including many hundreds of Malaysian Trumpet Snails (normally safe with snail-eating fish since they stay buried much of the time and have very hard shells). I was snorkeling earlier this year and saw one of them swimming around with a snail shell in its mouth. Overall a good hardy fish, but if you like snails, beware.

#4 Guest_butch_*

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Posted 15 September 2013 - 06:29 PM

Interestingly that aggression varies in the Cutlips Minnows when keeping together with other fishes. But why the eye-picking behavior occurred in someone's aquarium but not occurred in another person's aquarium? I thought they are interesting minnows.

#5 Guest_HicksFish_*

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Posted 16 September 2013 - 05:28 AM

... One word of warning beware of keeping them with fish with colorful eyes as they will and are amazingly good at plucking eyes out of other fish. ...

A friend of mine had the same experience with them - pickng the eyes out of other fish. We were fore-warned though - the nature center at Batsto lake in NJ (where we found them) had a small display with a write-up that mentioned this behavior. I got the impression they were doing it for food, but aggression does sound more likely.

#6 keepnatives

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 12:08 AM

Perhaps the snails in Derek's tank were preferred over eyes.


Mike Lucas
Mohawk-Hudson Watershed
Schenectady NY



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