I honestly was not certain your snake could make it based upon the amount of skin lesions, so in retrospect the least amount of money spent on the animal would have been best.
To properly acclimate that animal, even if it had not been in that condition, would have been pricey if you do not own your own microscope to run fecal exams, etc.
Even then, you have to deal with a veterinarian to get the proper form of many de-wormers. And you are always at the whim of the level of expertise of any given veterinarian. I have found many of the people that will see reptiles not up to speed with the situations that arise in imports. Especially from the tropics.
I do not blame you for not heeding the advice of some random. As far as veterinarians go, there are reptile vets and there are reptile vets. Even the best can make mistakes. Some things are far more complicated than a bearded dragon with MBD.
Who I am is a graduate student, evolutionary biology PhD program. But I have been keeping reptiles since 1977. I would have made an excellent reptile veterinarian, probably one of the best in the country and perhaps the world. But at my age it is not worth the 250k it would cost me to do this, to make poop per year with few years to pay it off before I am in the grave.
Plus, I would quickly get bored with people bringing me ball pythons and bearded dragons that are jacked up because the people are, well....
So, that would mean DVM/PhD would be necessary to keep my sanity, and again, PhD in science they pay me to go to school. Vet school, I pay through the nose.
So, this is what I do, but not who I am.
Basically, I keep almost exclusively arboreal boids: green tree pythons and emerald tree boas. Working with imported green tree pythons made me do a lot of research on my own and work closely with a few very good (and many not very not good) veterinarians.
You did your best, that animal was critical when you got it. It might have made it under my care (no offense), and it might have not. That $55.00 blood python would have become very expensive. But there is no way in hell I would have let that thing into my house anywhere near my animals.
It is better for you that it is not anywhere near any of yours. With these sort of things, one hopes that the situation is bacterial, but there are viruses and all kinds of problems that are not known.
It might be that no-one could have saved the snake. Probably a good chance of that.
So, you did the right thing and took your animal to the vet. And at the 55.00 price point, that is unfortunately a disposable animal (which is a horrible thing to say).
You can learn a lot of different things working with wild critters and imports.
Life is 100% easier dealing with captive bred critters direct from a reputable breeder. Costs more upfront, but night and day with how the animals are.
But not always:
http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=220629
As for places selling animals, there is a major store here in SoCal, I have seen their ads on kingsnake for years. Online, they look legit, if not slightly expensive. In their store, the place stinks, there are snake mites, and vapona pest strips in cages with water dishes. Snakes can come in direct contact with the pest strips, and the water can become contaminated. Cages are too small for many larger animals, water bowls are dry and some have a turd in them. Not even worth wasting my breath in there.
Donkeyragers is what these people are. At a raging party kicking their feet like a donkey.
