Hello everyone. New to the forum; new to the hobby. Pretty sure my bp has scale rot.
He's 9yrs old, but I've only had him about a month. I noticed last week he looked like he was about to moult so I bumped up the humidity in his tank (75gal glass aquarium). I took it from ~60% to ~80%. It took him a week to shed any of his skin. He spent the entirety of that time under his hide. When I finally noticed he had shed I lifted the lid to check it out and his shed was definitely stuck. I assumed that this could only be caused by low humidity and thought that my hygrometers were inaccurate. Checked the humidity under his hide thinking there might be a pocket of dry air and it seemed to check out. Regardless, I tried increasing the humidity again and gave him another 24hrs. No luck. Soaked him and helped peel the majority of his shed off. Mostly, it came off easy. Had some trouble around his vent and tail so I left it for him to deal with and he eventually got it off. Left him alone another couple days and when I came back I noticed the pink discoloration on about the last third of his body and tail. Also noticed what I thought was dirt from his substrate and some flaky skin. I don't have a thermostat and thought maybe he got burned but after placing a thermometer under his hide it never got above 92 so I ruled that out and decided to quarantine him in a dry sterilite tub I sanitized with rubbing alcohol. Next day I checked on him and it had gotten considerably worse. He now had quite a bit of flaked skin, more severe discoloration and some slight bleeding. Went out and bought some betadine and Neosporin and have bathed and balmed him one a day since. I have an appointment with a vet on Wednesday and it seems like his condition has improved since the baths but I'm still worried. I intend to keep him in the sterilite tub and sterilize everything once a day till I get him in to the doc. He's got paper towels for substrate, a shallow water dish, and a hygrometer in there that reads 45% humidity and 89° under a heat lamp and UV bulb that are providing the only heat, nothing under him.
I may be blowing this out of proportion consider I've read it's not uncommon for this to happen but I was hoping to get some feedback about my husbandry up to this point. Would like to know what else I could be doing better, and what I may be doing wrong. Any constructive criticism and advice would be appreciated--want to make sure my buddy survives and is okay.
Lastly, my intuition says that I shouldn't attempt feeding him considering he's going to be going through a lot, doesn't have any heat under him, and is in a weakened state but I was wondering if he might need to eat and if it would help him to get a meal. I read somewhere he may be lacking in vitamin A and C and perhaps there's some sort of supplement I could give him with a rat. Last he ate, I fed him a frozen (thawed) small rat. Thanks in advance; pictures soon to come.