All can be adapted to aquarium or pond life. Information on the Southern redbelly dace can be found on my Southern redbelly dace page . The Northern redbelly dace grows to 3 inches and feeds on algae and plant debris as do the other two species. Darters Darters are small fish that are becoming increasingly rare. The 100 or so North American species tend to live in streams and grow to about an inch, with some growing up to 5 inches.
Males often build and guard nests.
One species is the Johnny Darter, or Etheostoma nigrum , which likes to live in pools. Most other species of darter should have a stream in which to swim. The first book mentioned under books below contains 48 species of darter. Another book that one of the readers of this web page has contains over 160 species of darter. For information on the orangethroat darter, Etheostoma spectabile , go to the orangethroat darter page .