InvertKeeping exists because invertebrates deserve better documentation than they get.
I’ve spent years studying them. Not professionally, and not in a lab, but seriously: reading the primary literature, tracking down the original species descriptions, cross-referencing what breeders report against what field researchers observe, and keeping detailed records of the animals in my own care. Somewhere along the way the notes outgrew the notebook, and this site is what they turned into.
Why this site exists
Reptile and fish keepers have decades of accumulated, well-organised husbandry knowledge. Invertebrate keepers largely don’t.
What exists instead is scattered: forum threads where the useful answer is on page four, care sheets that copy each other’s errors until a mistake becomes consensus, and species accounts written by people who have clearly never kept the animal. Ask a specific question, like how deep the substrate should be for a fossorial species during premolt, or whether a particular isopod actually needs supplemental protein, and you can lose an entire evening to contradictory answers.
The frustrating part is that better information usually does exist. It’s just buried in taxonomic papers, breeder logs, and the collective memory of experienced keepers who’ve never written it down in one place.
This site is an attempt to do the gathering.
How I research a guide
Every care guide here goes through the same process.
I start with the taxonomy and the natural history, because most husbandry mistakes trace back to ignoring where an animal actually lives. Humidity requirements, substrate depth, temperature gradients, and activity patterns all follow from habitat. A species from Mediterranean scrubland and one from lowland rainforest are not interchangeable just because they share a genus.
From there I work through published sources, breeder documentation, and the consensus of experienced keepers in the community, weighting them differently depending on the question. Field data is better for environmental parameters. Long-term keeper reports are better for behaviour, feeding response, and what actually goes wrong in captivity.
Where sources disagree, I say so rather than picking one and presenting it as settled. Invertebrate husbandry has a lot of genuinely open questions, and pretending otherwise is how bad advice spreads.
Where I keep the species myself, the guide reflects direct observation, and the details tend to be sharper for it. Where I don’t, I don’t pretend to. Nobody has hands-on experience across every genus, and a guide is more useful when it’s clear which parts come from experience and which from research.
Guides get revised when something changes my mind. If you find an error, tell me. Corrections get made, and credited if you want the credit.
What the site covers
Seven groups, each with its own set of guides:
The coverage is deepest where the questions are most common and the existing information is weakest, which is why isopods and mantids get more attention here than their popularity alone would suggest.
The apps
Careful record keeping is the single most underrated husbandry skill.
Molt intervals, feeding refusals, humidity drift, growth between instars: none of these mean much as isolated observations. They mean a great deal as a series. The keeper who notices a molt cycle stretching out over three months catches a problem the keeper relying on memory won’t see until the animal is in trouble.
That’s what I built the apps for, and both are free:
InvertMate handles individually tracked animals: tarantulas, scorpions, mantids, millipedes, centipedes, and beetles. Log molts, feedings, rehouses, and enclosure conditions per specimen, and watch the intervals emerge.
CrabPod is built for colony keepers. Hermit crabs and isopods aren’t tracked as individuals, they’re tracked as populations, and that’s a genuinely different problem.
They exist because I needed them for my own record keeping and a spreadsheet stopped being adequate.
No ads, nothing for sale
This site carries no advertising, no affiliate links, and no sponsored placements. Nothing here is written to move you toward a purchase.
The apps are free. If a guide recommends a piece of equipment, it’s because it’s the right tool, not because a recommendation pays.
Get in touch
Corrections, disagreements, species requests, and questions are all welcome through the contact page. Disagreements are especially welcome. Every one of them has made a guide better.