Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i have one bp that had scale rot, its healing....
i noticed today that i have another who looks to have it....
the humidty is about 40% the warm side is 90 degrees and the cool side about 78 to 80 degrees...
what are the causes of this??

not sure of the cause but your humidity is way to low. it shouldnt fall below 60%.
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Thanks,
Dave

1.0 Leucistic rat
0.2 Norm Ball Python
1.0 Pastel Ball Python
0.1 Norm BCI
1.0 hypo X hog (sunset cross)
1.1 Anery 66% het stripped snow BCI

40% RH is just fine (perfect?) for daily maintainence of BPs. Mine get room humidity, even in the winter when it can be 30% or lower. In over ten years and literaly hundreds of snakes, I've never had an RI, never had scale rot, or any other illness. Not one! Suggesting that this species and others require high humidity is a MYTH, and can be a dangerous one. The only time when the humidity ought to be a little higher is during shedding. Many problems with BPs and other snakes (Bloods, GTPs) are caused by too much moisture/humidity in the enclosure. Just trying to jump in and stop the misinformation train. There are alot of folks that seem to assume everything they read here is 100% accurate, and then make mistakes that endanger the health of their animal.

yes i know exactly what you mean by mis information, thats what got me into this mess..... the girl who i bought my second bp from told me 70 to 80% humidity mist every day, twice if i want to...... then when i noticed the scale rot, she didnt know what to do, because i called her that saturday evening when i noticed it and "she could have gave me some bad info"
that monday me and the snake were in the vets office, when i was told to keep her "dry" and let the humidy stay at around 40% no higher, its a ball python not an anconda...LOL
and on here on this forum i had read where they did better at lower humidty...
so i must say i am thankful for the knowledgeable people on this board who are willing to help

scale rot on the belly is usually caused by the substrate being too wet.

if the living conditions are not clean enough, it will form on other parts of the body as well.

40% humidity will be fine, as long as you increase it for shed cycles, or offer a humid hide to aid sheds.

what is the substrate??

is it wet??

TomChambers

my substrate is cypress bedding, when the scare rot started on the first snake it was to wet because i was misting the cage to much..... when i saw the scale rot, i rushed her to the vet that monday( i saw it on a sat evening) at that point i was told to change every thing and clean the enclosure and keep it dry (40%) humidity, so i did that and put the snake on newspaper.... the other snake had not shown any signs of it but i changed his cage as well, my small bp was on aspen, so i put the other ball on the aspen as well, now he has shown signs of scale rot......i clean my enclosures changing everything every 2 weeks, but i spot clean each time they defecate.... because i was thinking it could be coming from the urates, i find alot of "white powder" on the bottm of the enclosures i figured that was coming from the urates??

the white powder probably was from the urates.

Your cleaning schedule sounds reasonable.

the majority of the time it's from the dampness of the substrate.

Have you still been misting??

wood will hold dampness for a while after misting.

other than that I can't think of any other reasons for the delayed symptoms.

TomChambers

i have quit with the misting, and changed my substrate... and put in humid hides..... because i did notice that there was to much moisture...