Best chance I could see is the Belonsox.
I have kept golden shinner minnows with both Bullhead and Channel catfish well over 6". No problem.
The key is to understand the species feeding habits. Catfish are notorious bottom feeders. Top minnows are the best bet to survive and co-exist with catfish. I would be far more concerned with the sunfish/ minnow combination potential.
I know I am about the only member of MFK that firmly believes that the depth of the container housing the fish is everybit as important as the footprint. I could not disagree more with every other member here on MFK.
They can say what they will about fish keeping in aquaria, and I cannot dispute it. I can however explain how the concept of "water columns" pertaining to fishermen targeting various fish species in the wild.
Go ahead, cast surface lures all day long into a 36" + deep natural body of water containing bullheads and see how many you catch. An even better test, do so with another who is using a sinker to get their bait/ lure to the bottom and compare your catfish catches at days end.
I am shocked to hear that 9" striped Shiners get picked off by bullheads in tanks. I would nearly bet the farm that SEVERAL variables came into play in these cases.
1. The overall height of the tank (depth of water) was under 30". +
2. Adequate food was not reaching the bottom for the catfish to eat by other tankmates, and the catfish on the verge of starving obviously changed their bottom feeding M.O. and went middle to top water columns outside of their nature to survive.
I literally have THOUSANDS of golden shiners in my farm pond as forage food for the larger predators. Everything in the pond "eats" them, and yet they can't put a dent in the breeding stock.
The predators in the pond are:
2 x 16+" LMB
2 x 24+" male Bowfin
1 x 30+" Longnose Gar
? x Green Sunfish (Pond Overrun by these trash little Sunfish with huge mouths closer to Bass then most other sunfish outside of Warmouths.
2 x Monster snapping turtles (that ate 14 Florida gar this year!)
The ones in my tanks are gorgeous, and are cheap (< 0.10cents in bulk) Worst case scenario they are 100 x the feeders that Fatheads of goldfish are.
