I really don't know of another minnow species that would be good. My thoughts are to really make sure you have way more than enough spawning structure for fathead minnows, coupled with adjacent safe structure that newly born fatheads can survive in.
Our conventional wisdom here says that fatheads eventually get eradicated by predator species, but I just wonder if you could keep a decently sustaining fathead population by creating several safe spawning and growing areas for them.
Even if you had a way to block off or net off a small area of the pond where there would be no predator fish, you could net out hundreds and hundreds of fatheads and release them into the rest of the pond several times a week.
