Answers to the questions people actually ask
Six free tools, built on the same 158 fact-checked care guides as the rest of this site. No ads, no affiliate links, no sign-up, and every one of them shows its working — including what it deliberately does not model.
Is it big enough?
Enter an animal and the space you have. You get a verdict on welfare grounds — floor area and height for land animals, volume and swimming length for fish — not a gallons number that treats a hamster like a goldfish.
Where the recognised standards disagree, you will see all of them. For a Syrian hamster they range from a large retailer's stated minimum to more than five times that figure, and pretending otherwise would be the dishonest part.
Can it eat that?
Pick an animal, type a food. You get one of four answers — staple, occasional, rare treat, or never — and the reason: oxalates, calcium-to-phosphorus ratio, sugar load, a specific toxin.
A food we have not checked comes back as "not on our list", never as a guess. That is the whole point of the tool.
What does it really cost?
Setup, monthly, first year, and across the animal's whole life — itemised, so you can see which line is the one that matters. Published figures for the same animal disagree by a factor of four, which is why this shows ranges rather than picking one.
Electricity is included, worked out from the actual wattage of the heating and lighting against a tariff you type in. Nobody else publishes that, and for a heated reptile it is not a rounding error.
Which of these two is actually easier?
The same axes for both animals, side by side. Not two care articles and a video.
My kit says 0.25 ppm. Is that dangerous?
It depends, and not on anything your test kit can tell you. A liquid kit measures total ammonia, but only the un-ionised fraction is really toxic — and that fraction is governed by pH and temperature. Each whole pH unit multiplies it roughly tenfold.
So the same 2 ppm reading can be nearly harmless in one tank and lethal in another. This works out which one you are in.
Check it before it goes in
Softwood shavings and raw corncob are still on shelves and still recommended by shop staff. This is the mistake that gets made before the animal even arrives.
Finding an exotics vet
We do not publish a vet directory, and that is deliberate. A list of practices we have not verified, presented as though we had, is worse than no list — and this is the one page where someone might be reading it in an emergency.
What we can tell you is where the real directories are, and what to ask before you need them.
Where to look
- Association of Reptile and Amphibian Veterinarians — the professional body for reptile and amphibian medicine, with a member directory. arav.org
- Association of Exotic Mammal Veterinarians — the equivalent for rabbits, rodents, ferrets and other small mammals. aemv.org
- House Rabbit Society — chapter-maintained rabbit-vet lists. Coverage is patchy by region, which the organisation says itself. rabbit.org
- Your nearest exotics-only or avian practice — even if they do not treat your species, reception will usually know who does.
- Local keeper groups and rescues — a rescue that handles your species has already found the good vet in your area, and will tell you.
What to ask when you call
- Do you see this species routinely, or occasionally?
- Roughly how many do you see in a month?
- Who covers your out-of-hours, and do they see this species too?
- Can I register now, before anything is wrong?
Register before you need to. The last two questions are the ones that matter at 11pm on a Sunday, and neither can be answered then.