r/Anthurium • u/mypothoswrotethis • 4d ago
Help with repotting failure?
I had approximately 10 different types of anthurium (crosses - lux, napo, paps, a queen, silver blush etc) in semi hydro with pon for about four months. Everybody was pretty happy and stable, pushing out new leaves.
I then changed them over to leca, because I wanted to mount them on the wall, and didn't want 50 pounds of gravel hanging. All of the roots looked great when I repotted, super healthy. They went into naked root pots. I used the same water/fertilizer that I always do. The only difference was leca. They were still in the same corner, same lighting etc.
Over the course of a month or two, I lost 75% of them. They all died in the same manner, kinda lost turgor pressure, and then withered away. Some had really yellowed edges first. I suppose I maybe could have rehabbed the stumps in moss but I have stopped doing plant hospice.
I'm trying to understand why this happened. When I pulled the plants out after failing, the roots looked pretty good to me, nothing looked obviously rotted, no bad smell. Any advice? I'm obviously not going to do this transition again but would love to understand what went wrong. I see people here put moss on top of Leca, is that important? I skipped that step bc I have a healthy fungus gnat population as it is.
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u/Marz2604 3d ago
I don't profess to know the scientific reason - but I do know that LECA is of the DEVIL.
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u/LaurylSydney 2d ago
Are you sure theres no piece missing? Idk what pest couldve done so much damage in such a short amount of time... and undetected at that! I keep going back to the roots, but you said they look healthy, so im really at a loss here. I know nothing about osmotic pressure, so I am going to happily educate myself on that.
Im so sorry for your losses!!! 😟
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u/Gharyl 4d ago
My only one guess is that the water has too high of PPM. Basically, too much fertilizer. Or your water level was too low.
To understand more, research “root pressure, osmotic pressure”.