The fantail darter is distributed across much of eastern North America, from the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River basins to South Carolina and northern Alabama, in small streams.

[5] Their food sources can include mayflies, caddisflies, dipterans, copepods, cladocerans, amphipods, isopods, and gastropods.

[5] Fantail darters are primarily benthic invertivores, so inhabit shallow, high-velocity microhabitats of the streams - riffles.

[6] Though the fantail darter has a fairly good low-oxygen tolerance, there comes a point when too little oxygen is harmful.

[8] Fantail darters have an interesting growth period in that they do not really have a larval stage; instead, they start to feed two to three days after hatching.

[8] Fantail darters also have extensive and well-developed vitelline plexuses from the time they are very young, which allows them to feed on bigger prey quickly.

This means that they have no need to drift farther down the stream to find small planktonic prey as early young.

[9] These nests can be easily disturbed, and the delicate eggs can be destroyed simply by a human walking through the stream, yet another potential risk in their lives.

[4] A research study collecting data on the fantail darter found all the males are, in fact, cannibals.