I was just poking around a small stream and I encountered a large minnow trap made of a plastic barrel someone had left there. Inside, there were common shiners, creek chubs and bullheads, but also another strange type of blunt- headed fish with round tails. I extracted a few and they turned out to be mudminnows! I'm not sure which species they are, (Eastern or Central), or if they were found in the stream or obtained from a bait shop or something and being stored in the stream. I'm assuming the former since the other fish species are found in that stream and there was a lack of golden shiners in the trap.
Anyway, I'll post pictures soon so they can be ID'd. I assume it would be OK to put mudminnows in a 40 gallon stream tank with blacknose dace? Or do they hate flowing water?
Mudminnows in Massachusetts
Started by
Riffledace
, Apr 17 2017 12:24 PM
4 replies to this topic
#3
gerald
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- Global Moderator
- Wake Forest, North Carolina
Posted 17 April 2017 - 02:02 PM
I remember catching some (not sure if eastern or central) in a tiny pond / large puddle near the UMass campus circa 1980. Easterns are typically slack-water fish, but I've also found them in pretty strong flowing streams too where there's dense plants, roots, and branch piles to provide a refuge from the flow. As long as there's some slackwater areas in the tank I think they'll do OK with dace and shiners.
Gerald Pottern
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Hangin' on the Neuse
"Taxonomy is the diaper used to organize the mess of evolution into discrete packages" - M.Sandel
#5
Pike
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- NANFA Member
- New Hampshire
Posted 25 June 2023 - 10:01 PM
Just an update, these guys are doing great and have rapidly become my favorite fish!
They definitely have “personality”, so to speak. As was posted in another thread, they have an odd type of hovering they do with their fins, very similar to pickerel.
I overwintered 4 adults in a 50 gallon plastic drum this past winter that had held non-toxic foodstuff so it was easy to clean out. The water was near freezing and even froze over a few times inside my garage. Rather than have a biological filter, I did water changes. They fed aggressively despite the low water temperatures.
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