Is this scale rot?

[bnorb]

Hi!

My wife and I got 2 bps between us and we've been dealing with a bit of a weird issue lately (at least weird for us). About 2 months ago we noticed some wound-like or rot-like spots on both of them, 2-3 each. One even had an issue around its cloaca and even ended up losing one of its spurs. That time we've pulled out basically everything from the enclosures, did a deep clean and put them on paper towel for a few weeks and treated them with betadine baths. That cleaned up both of their issues and they were back to normal after a shed.

Initially I thought that the our substrate might have been the issue, but now it's back and now they're on coconut fiber which we've used before without issue. What I'm thinking right now is it might be a bacterial scale-rot caused by a bit too much humidity (65-70% instead of 55-60%, definitely my bad), but I would really like some confirmation or other ideas as well. To add a bit complexity I also did notice one small bug on one of the snakes that looked like a mite, but yellowish-brown instead of black, but it was only the one, haven't found any other, so I'm assuming it was something else.

Currently we're starting the same procedure that we did last time, hopefully it'll work again, but of course I'd like to avoid this happening again. At least they're pretty chill about it, no change in behavior, both just ate a few days ago.

So if anyone has seen a similar issue, I'd definitely appreciate some help.

Thanks!
s

[Stewart_Reptiles]

Those looks more like an injuries with one that led to a loss of scale.

[bnorb]

We thought about that, but not sure what could cause it. If it's an injury then our most probable bet is the rock decorations that we have in the enclosures, but those have been there for a while now and didn't cause an issue in the past. Also it's not visible on the pictures, because I took them after a betadine bath, but the wounds usually come with red, swollen skin as well, that gets better after a bath.

I sure hope you are right tho, definitely a better option than infection.

[dr del]

Just to add,

Don't worry too mutch about the loss of a spur as most of the visible spur is made up of a cap of previous sheds which can be caught and popped off occasionally - unless of course there was blood and no sign of a tiny white spur remaining.


del