KeepersNook answers the questions keepers actually ask before they buy an animal: how big it gets, what it costs to house properly, what it can safely eat, and what it can live with.
Most animal-care content buries the answer, blurs the risk, or repeats forum opinion without telling you what is well-supported and what is one person's experience. This site is built the other way round.
Who writes this
Every guide on KeepersNook is written and edited by one person. There is no content team and no rotating pool of freelancers, which means the byline on a guide is the person you can hold responsible for it.
The author
- Name
- Jonathan Do
- Role
- Founder and editor
- Writes about
- Aquarium and vivarium husbandry, backyard poultry, small mammal and avian care
- Hands-on experience
- Over ten years keeping freshwater aquariums and backyard poultry
- Reachable at
- the contact page
The full author profile lists every guide published to date. If a guide is wrong, it is wrong under a real name, and the correction path below goes to that same person.
How a guide gets built
The process is the same for every guide, and it is the reason the answer sits at the top rather than four scrolls down.
From question to published guide
- Start from the real questionThe guide is built around what a keeper searches, not around a keyword list. If a question has no honest answer, the guide does not get written.
- Check it against primary sourcesVeterinary references, university extension material, government guidance, and established keeper organisations. Not forums, not AI summaries, not unattributed blogs.
- Lead with the answerThe first paragraph answers the question. The conditions and limits come immediately after, not at the end.
- State the uncertaintyWhere husbandry consensus is genuinely split, the guide says so rather than picking a side and sounding confident.
- Publish with sources visibleEvery guide ends with its sources, named, with the year shown where the claim depends on it.
How to read a guide
Every guide carries the same three signals, and they are worth knowing before you rely on one.
What the signals mean
- Care level
- What the animal demands of you, not how much you will enjoy it. An expert animal is not a better animal, it is a worse first animal. A guide with no badge means we have not rated it, not that it is easy.
- Sources
- Listed at the end, named, with the year shown when the claim depends on it. If a guide makes a safety or toxicity claim, it traces to a veterinary, university, or government source.
- Updated date
- Changes when the guidance changes, not when a word was moved. A guide with an old date has not drifted; it has not needed to.
Guides also state what they do not know. Where husbandry consensus is genuinely split, the guide says so and explains what the disagreement turns on, rather than picking the confident-sounding side.
What we will not do
We also do not publish an animal as suitable for beginners because it is cheap or widely sold. The care level shown on each guide describes what the animal demands of you, not how much you will enjoy owning it.
When we get it wrong
Care guidance changes, and single-author sites make mistakes. Both are handled the same way.
Corrections
- How to report one
- Send the URL and what is wrong through the contact page
- What happens next
- The claim is re-checked against its source, and the guide is corrected or the claim removed
- If the guide changes materially
- The updated date on the guide changes with it
The editorial policy sets out the sourcing standard and the review rules in full.
How the site pays for itself
KeepersNook carries affiliate links on some equipment recommendations. A recommendation is never placed, changed, or ranked because of a commission, and no manufacturer has ever paid for coverage or seen a guide before publication. The affiliate disclosure explains the arrangement in full.
What the site covers today
KeepersNook publishes 390 guides across 6 animal groups. Each group is organised around the decisions a keeper makes in order: what the animal needs, how to house it, what it can eat, and what it can live with.
| Group | Guides | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Freshwater Fish | 130 | Stocking, water parameters, tank mates, and the setup decisions that keep a freshwater tank stable. |
| Poultry | 90 | Breed selection, coop and run design, feed safety, laying performance, and flock health. |
| Reptiles | 61 | Heat gradients, UVB, humidity, enclosure sizing, and species-specific feeding schedules. |
| Small Mammals | 49 | Housing size, bedding, safe produce, social needs, and the lifespan you are signing up for. |
| Pet Birds | 34 | Cage sizing, enrichment, diet beyond seed, talking ability, and species temperament. |
| Saltwater Fish | 26 | Reef-safe stocking, salinity and flow, quarantine, and what a marine tank actually demands. |
Coverage is uneven on purpose. A group gets depth when there are questions worth answering properly, not so the counts look balanced.