The default first gecko for a serious keeper — and the one whose husbandry is most confidently misremembered online.
Species Care Sheets
A working reference shelf of 1,840+ field-tested care sheets, grouped by taxonomic order, every claim cited to its source, every protocol run through a 90-day multi-keeper review before it goes live.
Directory by taxonomic group
The index is grouped by animal order, not popularity. Each group links into the full species list, filtered by clade, with sheet counts and the number of translations currently available.
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01
Lizards
Lacertilia · Sauria
Geckos, iguanids, agamids, monitors, skinks, chameleons, and the long tail of intermediate-clade lizards keepers actually maintain.
812 sheets · 7 languages -
02
Snakes
Serpentes
Colubrids, pythons, boas, and rear-fanged species — with husbandry sheets that cover feeding refusal cycles, quarantine, and breeding conditioning.
497 sheets · 7 languages -
03
Chelonians
Testudines
Tortoises, freshwater turtles, and the more delicate box-turtle and softshell husbandry profiles that pull most of the database's traffic.
318 sheets · 6 languages -
04
Amphibians
Lissamphibia
Frogs, salamanders, newts, and caecilians — sheets calibrated for the humidity, chytrid biosecurity, and live-food logistics these species demand.
184 sheets · 5 languages -
05
Crocodilians
Crocodylia
A small but exacting index covering dwarf and medium crocodilians kept under permitted private husbandry in the US, EU, and a handful of Asian jurisdictions.
22 sheets · 4 languages -
06
Tuataras
Rhynchocephalia
A single living species, but its husbandry profile is unusual enough to warrant its own sheet, written with two zoo-based keepers in New Zealand.
7 sheets · 3 languages
Looking for a species not listed? The protocols index covers cross-species techniques (quarantine, incubation, UVB sizing). For a species that should have a sheet, see the request form in the FAQ below.
How a care sheet gets from research to your screen
Every species sheet on IguanaNaut passes through the same four-stage pipeline, and the pipeline is published — keepers can see exactly who reviewed what, when, and against which evidence base. The aim is not a polished brochure. The aim is a document a working keeper can hand to a working keeper, with the receipts attached.
Stage one — the evidence base
Before a draft is written, the assigned editor assembles an evidence dossier: peer-reviewed papers where they exist, captive-breeder mortality logs from the IguanaNaut database, and any veterinary case series relevant to the species. Hobbyist forum posts are not cited. They may inform questions, but they are not evidence.
Stage two — the draft
A single author drafts the sheet against the dossier. Each husbandry claim — basking temperature, humidity cycle, UVB index, substrate choice, feeding cadence — is tagged with a citation tier, shown in the margin as a coloured bar.
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Peer-reviewed. Source is a published paper in a recognised herpetological or veterinary journal. Tier marker is the primary green.
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Breeder log. Source is a multi-keeper log from the IguanaNaut database or an equivalent published breeding record. Tier marker is the muted grey-green.
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Editorial. Source is the editorial team's experience, vetted by the advisory board but not formally peer-reviewed. Tier marker is the terracotta accent.
Stage three — the 90-day keeper review
The draft is handed to a minimum of three independent keepers, none of whom know each other and none of whom are the original author. Each runs the protocol against the species for at least 90 days. Their notes — disagreements included — are published as a review appendix at the foot of the sheet.
Stage four — the timestamp
Every published sheet carries a Last reviewed date. Husbandry moves on; a sheet that has not been re-checked against current evidence within 18 months is flagged as overdue and queued for a revision cycle. The timestamp is a discipline, not a decoration.
Featured sheet, this week
A peek at the structure of a working IguanaNaut care sheet — the sticky in-page table of contents, the margin-note pitfalls, the citation tier bar, and the last-reviewed timestamp every sheet carries.
Captive husbandry profile for the corn snake, covering enclosure geometry, thermal gradient, humidity cycle, feeding cadence, and the three failure modes keepers most frequently log to the M&M database for this species.
Open the full sheetSix sheets keepers are opening most often
Pulled from session telemetry across 41,800+ subscribers. Each card shows the last-reviewed date and the number of language translations currently available through the European Herpetological Society partnership.
A high-traffic sheet covering neonate-to-adult thermal gradient and the humidity-shed relationship that new keepers most often get backwards.
Husbandry profile split across three subspecies, with separate sheets for the northern, eastern, and Indonesian lineages.
An amphibian sheet with the deepest impaction-rate discussion in the index, cross-referenced against the M&M database's substrate logs.
The most-edited sheet in the index — covering humidity, feeding refusal, and the three breeder-log husbandry patterns that keep reappearing in M&M submissions.
A chelonian sheet that leans heavily on European breeder logs, written with two permit-holding keepers in southern France.
Telemetry covers Q1 2026. Full archive of 1,840+ sheets is browsable by clade, by region of origin, and by husbandry complexity.
Languages, review cadence, authorship, requests
Short answers to the four practical questions a serious keeper tends to ask before clicking into a sheet for the first time.
- Which languages are the sheets available in?
- Through the partnership with the European Herpetological Society, sheets are translated into seven languages: English (canonical), German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and Dutch. Translation coverage varies by species and is shown on each card. A new translation cycle runs every spring and autumn.
- How often is a sheet re-reviewed?
- Every published sheet carries a Last reviewed date. Husbandry moves on; a sheet that has not been re-checked against current evidence within 18 months is flagged as overdue and queued for a revision cycle. High-traffic species (leopard gecko, corn snake, ball python) are reviewed on a rolling 6-month schedule.
- Who actually writes the sheets?
- Sheets are drafted by the core editorial team of six full-time editors, reviewed by the 9-person advisory board (3 DVMs specialising in reptile medicine, 1 tenured herpetologist, and 5 senior breeders), and field-tested by a contributor network of 38 keepers, vets, and breeders. Authorship and review credits are listed at the foot of every sheet.
- What if the species I keep isn't listed?
- Email [email protected] with the binomial, your husbandry context (captive-bred, long-term, breeder), and any references you already trust. Requests are triaged against the species queue and, where evidence permits, added to the next production cycle. The protocols index also covers many cross-species techniques that work before a dedicated sheet exists.