Image source: Dustin Lynch | inaturalist.org
The slim minnow (Pimephales tenellus) is a species of freshwater ray-finned fish from the family Cyprinidae, the carps and minnows which is endemic to the United States, in Ozarks of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. It is a cylindrically shaped, slender fish, similar in shape to the bluntnose minnow (Pimephalus notatus), with a blunt snout and a slightly oblique mouth which has an upper lip which is much thicker in the middle than at the corners. It has a dark lateral band and a large eye which has a diameter of roughly a quarter of the length of the head. It has a dark-olive back and creamy white underparts with a well defined dark lateral band which terminates in a spot just before the caudal fin with a small dark spot often found on the front of the dorsal fin. The breeding male has three rows of 12 tubercles and the dorsal fin, anal fin and caudal fin become tinged with orange while the pectoral fins turn black with a white leading edge, the head often turns black, too. It is the smallest species in the genus Pimephales with the adults normally being 51 millimetres (2.0 in) with a maximum length of 69 millimetres (2.7 in). It has 8 soft rays in the rather rounded dorsal fin and seven in the anal fin. It is found in southern Missouri, eastern Kansas, Arkansas, and northeastern Oklahoma where they are restricted to the Ozarks, particularly in the drainage basins of the Red and Arkansas rivers as well as in some independent tributaries of Mississippi. It has also been recorded in a pond in the drainage of the Osage River in Kansas where it was probably released by an angler using the fish as bait.
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