About Keepers Guide

Keepers Guide was built because exotic and small-pet care information online is disproportionately thin compared to how much genuinely species-specific detail these animals need. Reptiles, small mammals, birds, amphibians, and invertebrates each come with real, sourced husbandry requirements — and getting them wrong has real welfare consequences, not just a suboptimal outcome. A bearded dragon and a leopard gecko are both "lizards," but their temperature, UVB, and diet needs are meaningfully different, and a generic "reptile care" article rarely reflects that.

Every husbandry parameter on this site — enclosure size, temperature, humidity, UVB, diet, supplementation, cohabitation — is drawn from a named, reputable veterinary or herpetological/avian source and dated, with the full list on the methodology page. Where reputable sources genuinely disagree, that's shown honestly rather than smoothed into one tidy answer, and where a dangerous myth still circulates in general pet-care spaces (loose sand substrate being "fine" for every lizard, for instance), it's flagged explicitly rather than left unaddressed.

Keepers Guide is educational, not veterinary. Every problem page, health pillar, and the diagnose tool carry a clear disclaimer directing readers toward a qualified exotic vet for anything acute — this site helps you understand what's going on and what to watch for, not replace a real exam. The interactive tools follow the same rule: every calculator result traces back to the same sourced husbandry data used on the species pages, never a number invented for the tool alone.

The site is maintained on an annual husbandry-refresh cycle — each sourced parameter is checked against its cited reference and updated if the guidance has changed, with the "checked" date on every species page reflecting that. See the methodology page for the refresh policy and the full list of reference sources used across the site. Corrections and species requests are always welcome via the contact page.