# Pet care guides

> Long-form, evidence-based guides on reptile and small-pet husbandry. Each guide compares published species standards side by side, links its sources, and is reviewed as standards update.

## Guides

- **[Snake Starter Guide](https://petguidecalc.com/reptile/snake-care/)** — Enclosure size, temperature gradient, and humidity targets for ball pythons and corn snakes, compared side by side.
- **[What Can Guinea Pigs Eat? Food Checker](https://petguidecalc.com/guinea-pigs/what-can-guinea-pigs-eat/)** — Verdict photo wall of reviewed guinea pig foods: Safe, Limit, Avoid, or Toxic on every card, filterable by verdict and food category.

## How these guides work

Every guide starts from primary husbandry literature — species-specific care sheets from organizations such as ReptiFiles, RSPCA care articles, and peer-reviewed papers where available. Each claim points to a source so the recommendation can be verified.

Where the source literature only covers one species (for example, bearded dragon incubation), the guide pairs that data with the closest published analogue and names the boundary so the reader knows where the recommendation ends.

## Questions about the guides

**Q: What topics do the guides cover?**

Currently a snake starter guide (ball python and corn snake husbandry, side by side) and a guinea pig food safety guide (a verdict wall of reviewed foods). Each guide pairs with one or more calculators so you can take the recommendation and turn it into a number.

**Q: How long is each guide?**

Most guides are 5–15 minutes of reading, structured around the questions a new keeper would actually ask (enclosure size, basking temperature, feeding frequency, common pitfalls). Long-form species profiles go deeper.

**Q: Where do your sources come from?**

Each guide cites the primary sources it relies on at the bottom — ReptiFiles care articles, RSPCA standards, AAHA / AAFP / WSAVA guidelines, peer-reviewed papers, and published veterinary formularies (Merck, Plumb's). Inline citations point to the specific page so a reader can verify a claim without leaving the guide.

**Q: Can I request a guide on a specific topic or species?**

Yes — request a guide through the contact link in /about/. Requests that pair with an existing calculator are the best fit, because the guide and the tool can cite the same sources.

_PetGuideCalc — https://petguidecalc.com_