I was watching my 10 month old banana mojave ball python climb when I noticed a yellow, curled up, dry looking scale on his belly. I’m concerned it’s either a symptom of dehydration or scale rot. It’s just one single scale and he has no other symptoms of dehydration or scale rot at the moment and has never had shedding issues. He’s currently in a 55 gallon glass terrarium, waiting on his 120 PVC tank to arrive. His warm side is 88f and cool side drops to 75f. The substrate, coco dirt, on his cool side is a bit damp due to his water spilling but I wasn’t too worried since he spends the day in his dry, warm hide and only explores the damp side at night. His humidity struggles, around 55%-60%, due to the glass and mesh top. I’m treating it like scale rot to be safe and cleaned the scale with diluted vet grade iodine. I’ll clean out the moist substrate as soon as I have more. Any advice would be appreciated.
It doesn’t look too bad to me.
I would probably just keep an eye on it until the next shed. He may have just injured his scale somehow.
If it does seem to spread or becomes red and inflamed looking, I would get a vet appointment just in case it’s a fungal infection. They’re not as common, but they can present as dried looking scales.
Just to be sure, is he eating f/t or live?
F/t hoppers once a week. He does have a habit of squeezing himself between the edge of the tank and the lid so he could’ve scratched himself, it just doesn’t look like a scratch to me since it’s the whole single scale being yellow and dry. Definitely going to be keeping and eye on it and making sure it doesn’t spread.
Good job keeping a great, thorough eye on your snake! Odds are that he’s just damaged that scale, scraping it on something. Scales can get caught here and there, worn, bent. If the snake squeezes into tight spaces, the scales can look pretty rough afterward. Fortunately, if it’s a simple case of scale damage, it should be good as new following the next shed. If it’s more than that, your sharp eye will be a great benefit in helping to sort it.