Scoots does not shed, plz help
 

hi, just registered...for only this reason...

i got 3 northen DBT and 1 reeves turtle. got them since december and since then they grew a lot like tripple in size.

now problem i got with all 4 is that there scoots does not come off, they are like stuck to the shell and quite tiny already... even the very first scoot is still on them. dont know what more to say to explain it better...no photos available at the moment.
i did try taking/ripping them off and some side scoots did come off but not the top ones those a stuck pretty hard.
its annoying/scares me a lot... plus looks ugly on dbt top scoots grows inwards, like new growth is fine just the part where the old scoot is doesnt lift up. some corners of the scoots peals of and gets grey color mush so i pressume that might be mold/rot or whatever its called, i do try to take it off as much as i can, but so far nothin works

at the time i bought them i didnt have much to offer: tank water food(dried shrimp/pallets). as time went on i got/tried everything and i still dont see any changes apart from them growing. apart from scoots theres nothing else wrong.

right now i have/give:
food: dried shrimp and pallets (tho dbt are super picky..and mostly eat only shrimp) recentry got water letis floating plants, and they eat them all with the plants i got some snails...they eat them too)
feeding amount: once a day or every other day.
supplement: calcium+d3 and zoo med vitamins -d3. calcium every few days for now and vits once a week...amounts i eyeball it on the low side all the time.
UVB: 5.0 (around 10-15cm away from there basking spot)
UVA: 40W heat bulb (less then 10cm away)
ph: tap water 7.4, been using that for most of the time...recently got co2 tablets for plants and that should have dropped ph to 6.8 by now. got no tester so cant say for sure, but if one tab drops ph by .2 so 3 tabs leave me with 6.8...
salt: none

so salt is the only thing i havent tried it yet and its my next mission, but im just wondering how it will affect reeves turtle...or there is something else i should do...like maybe bake them without any water so they would spend more time in the heat rather then going to water... now they do bask and does it regulary...so i dont know...


those who would judge me not buy before you have everything u need all at once, before u buy turtles, well thats true i normally agree with that, but
reeves was a present for my daugther 3rd birthday, unfortunetly people who dont care just gave him in a plastic 3$ container with a can of pallets...so by looking a better place for him to live...heat and space and by searching second hand stuff i found northen dbt for sale... my dream turtles... over a decade of searching... my birth country they dont exist, ireland they dont exist... after 4 years in spain by accident i found them... so hell yeah im gonna buy them for my rents money none the less. money and resources wise my hardest time of my life... but still dbt makes my happy and keeps me smiling and i want them to be healthy.
thank you for your time reading all this :)