Yick! Scale rot...

[crotalus]

I recently acquired a beautiful baby ball, but yesterday I noticed that two of his ventral scales were brown and crumpled - I think it's mild scale rot. We're going to the vet tomorrow. Hopefully everything will smooth out, but I was wondering if anyone had any tips to prevent a re-occurence, or to help him get better.

Currently he's in a 29-gallon viv with aspen bark substrate, and at 82 degrees ambient with a basking site at 90 degrees. His humidity is at 65%-70% pretty much uniformly across the cage.

Is this humidity too high? Or could something else be causing this? Soaking in the water dish, etc?

[Brandon.O]

Maybe the substrate is to wet ??

[Anonymous]

I personally don't let my humidity go up that high, UNLESS my ball python is in a shed.
I keep my humidity in the mid-50s

[Smulkin]

How often do you swap out the aspen?

[crotalus]

I change the aspen every week. This is really bugging me. ANd thanks for the note on humidity - I'll probably drop it, after this incident.

[rex322]

try not to let it go over 65% as to much humidity can cause more serious problems such as an RI. do you ever mist your tank? how long have you had the ball? just keep substrate dry, and possibly switch substrates to paper towel or newspaper, i use astroturf. i had a small case of scale rot with my female BCI and it cleared up after a shed

[led4urhead]

Do you keep the substrate damp? Usually a wet substrate is to blame for scale rot. Humidity to the mid 50's should be perfect. Depending on how bad the scale rot is .. it should clear up in a couple of sheds. Good plan getting to the vet. Almost for got ... Welcome to the site! We're glad to have ya here

[Marla]

If you switch to paper substrate and apply plain neosporin to the affected scales daily, it will most likely be gone in one shed, at most two. Then you can switch back to the aspen if you like, and keep an eye on humidity.

[crotalus]

I got Jack about six weeks ago, and he's been pretty healthy - up until the appearance of this scale rot. I didn't really even think about the humidity as the higher levels haven't affected Atilla (my 3-yr-old bp).

Anyway, I've taken your suggestions to heart, and cleaned out his cage thouroughly. The area around his water dish was icky and wet which probably contributed to the problem. Hopefully this clears out.

(Both of my babies are now at a comfortable 55% humidity now...)

[Bambi]

The BP I rescued had a slight case of scale rot. The guy I got her from baisically never cleaned her cage so she was in her own feces most of the time. I'm surprised the scale rot wasn't worse than it was actually. Same thing Marla said, Neosporin once a day, put on paper towles, and wait for a shed. Alexa's (BP) cleared up after her first shed with me. Now she has a clean belly