Bluntnose Minnow

Diet and feeding

The FishTraits compilation records these diet categories for this species: algae or phytoplankton; detritus or unidentified plant material; invertebrates or larval fish. These are broad categories, not a claim that every individual consumes every example in a category.

Reported feeding positions include bottom feeding and surface or water-column feeding. The compilation combines published observations; diets can vary with age, locality, and available food.

Habitat preferences

Reported habitat associations include medium to large rivers, streams and small rivers, creeks, still-water habitats.

The source records associations with clay or silt, sand, gravel, cobble, boulders, bedrock, vegetation. An association indicates reported use, rather than an exclusive requirement.

Reproduction and parental care

The compilation reports a representative maturity age of 1 years. Its maturity field summarizes mean, median, or modal estimates, usually for females; male estimates can be used when female data are unavailable. It is not a fixed age at which every fish first breeds.

Batch or serial spawning has been reported somewhere in the species’ range. This does not establish the same spawning pattern for every population.

Recorded spawning months are May, Jun, Jul, Aug for the source’s reporting region (NC). This is a regional calendar, not a range-wide schedule.

The reproductive-guild classification includes guarding eggs or young at a spawning substrate or nest.

Size and recorded longevity

FishTraits reports a maximum total length of 11 centimetres. Some entries use an estimated asymptotic length; this value should not be treated as a certified record catch.

Recorded longevity in the compilation is 3.5 years. Wild observations were preferred, but captive records were accepted where wild records were unavailable, and unspecified records were assumed wild. The value is not a guaranteed wild lifespan or an aquarium life expectancy.

Native range

Great Lakes, Hudson Bay (Red River), and Mississippi River basins from southern Quebec to southern Manitoba, and south to Louisiana; Atlantic Slope from St. Lawrence River, Quebec, to Roanoke River, Virginia (absent from most of New England); Gulf Slope from Mobile Bay drainage, Alabama, to Mississippi River (Page and Burr 1991).

Introduction history

This species has been transplanted commonly by bait bucket release and sometimes stocked as a forage fish or introduced by way of stock contamination. As indicated by Whitworth (1996), Pimephales notatus was introduced to a small stream in the Housatonic River drainage and that population was probably the source for other populations that have become established in other sites in the Housatonic drainage. Walters (1997) noted that the occurrence of this species in the middle section of the Conasauga River, Georgia, during the 1980s was probably the result of bait bucket introduction. Probably a bait bucket release in Massachusetts, it was first found in the Housatonic in 1979 and first noticed in Quabbin Reservoir in the early 1980s (Hartel 1992; Hartel et al. 1996). Trautman (1981) reported that, in addition to being propagated by bait dealers, Pimephales notatus was propagated and stocked throughout Ohio after 1925 by the state conservation department. He added that millions were seined annually from Ohio streams and sold and used as bait. Sigler and Sigler (1987) noted that it was introduced to Williard Bay Reservoir, Utah in 1982, but they did not provide additional details. Jenkins and Burkhead (1994) provided details on introductions, and possible introductions, for drainages associated with the state of Virginia. The presence of Pimephales notatus in the Potomac River drainage probably resulted from stockings, naturalization, and rapid spread. The first known record for the Potomac River drainage was from a Shenandoah River tributary in 1897. It was common to abundant in the lower Potomac by the early 1900s. Jenkins and Burkhead noted that it may have been used as forage in bass and sunfish culture ponds operated in Washington, D.C. by the former U.S. Fish Commission, and the species may have been disseminated with centrarchids. The first known record for the Rappahannock drainage was from 1972. In the James River, the fish was collected above the Blue Ridge in 1928; it may have been introduced with shipments of centrarchids and subsequently dispersed downstream. The first known record from the Roanoke came in 1947, the first from the Dan system (Roanoke drainage) in 1951. Jenkins and Burkhead (1994) interpreted the distribution pattern in the Roanoke proper and Dan systems of the Roanoke drainage to be the result of at least two introductions.

Ecological impacts

Largely unknown. Based on 1989 shorefish samples, Hartel et al. (1996) found it to be the most common minnow in Quabbin Reservoir, Massachusetts. Possibly in reference to native populations, Trautman (1981) noted that the species hybridizes with Pimephales promelas and P. vigilax.