Husbandry Fundamentals
The parts of reptile keeping that are not species-specific: heat, light, humidity, substrate, food and the routines around a new animal. These are the pages every care guide on this site points back to.
The fundamentals
Feeder insect nutrition
The Merck composition table. Not one feeder insect reaches a 1:1 calcium to phosphorus ratio, and dusting alone does not fix it.
Read it →Reptile-safe plants
The hobby's favourite bioactive plant is on the ASPCA toxic list. Whether that matters depends on whether your animal eats plants.
Read it →Heat and UVB
They do different jobs and are not interchangeable. Thermostats, gradients, and why UVB fades before the bulb dies.
Read it →Humidity
How to measure it where the animal actually sits, and how to raise it without causing a respiratory infection.
Read it →Substrate
Choose by what the animal does. Cedar and calcium sand are the clearest things to avoid.
Read it →Quarantine
Every new animal, 30 to 90 days, on paper substrate. The cheapest insurance in the hobby.
Read it →Shedding
What a normal shed looks like, why toes and tail tips are the danger spots, and why you never pull.
Read it →Breeding basics
Where the offspring go, the dystocia risk to the female, and the morph pairings that carry lethal or neurological defects.
Read it →Common questions
What husbandry basics apply to every reptile?
Four things carry across almost every species: a temperature gradient the animal can choose from, humidity measured where the animal actually sits, a substrate suited to how the animal behaves, and quarantine for anything new. Specific numbers are species-dependent, but the method is not.
What is the most common husbandry mistake?
Trusting equipment without checking it. Analogue dial gauges that ship with starter kits are frequently wrong by a wide margin, heat sources without thermostats have no upper limit, and UVB bulbs stop working long before they stop lighting. Most of the failures we document start as a measurement error rather than neglect.
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