Specimens rescued from a dried up creek in central Arkansas.
Ranging from 1 to 2.5 inches. They resemble a dace with a black lateral line. The tail fin is faintly red.
I think you are going to need either a photo or a much better description than that. That’s pretty vague.
Maybe it’s a dace with a black lateral line :).
The problem is, that doesn’t narrow it down very much. A quick image search shows a number of dace with black lateral lines; I don’t know how many occur in Arkansas.
It looks very much like the Southern redbelyy dace, but the tail fin of the adult is faintly red.