Oh my god I'm back on an orchid board! (a rescue thread)

[imgliniel]

Interesting to me how you can never be done right? Once you are bitten by the orchid bug I never lets you go. I haven't had plants in any form in my life for several years now, and here I am, back on orchid board, with a rescue Phal.

Short version, long long ago young me picked up an orchid from a home improvement store because it was pretty. Had some typical beginner issues and came here. Several years later went through a not so nice divorce and complete upheaval of my life, and had to give away the whole collection at that point. (I actually was going to re-home some here, but a friend that was local who has a serious green thumb and beautiful covered patio at her 5 miles from the beach home took them, as well as my cactus orchids (Epi's).

Now my life has settled, I have a lovely new home, much better people in my life then my ex, and my girlfriend got me a phal for valentines day.......

And here I am back on an orchid board. Unfortunately I re-potted the valentines day one and I am fairly certain (and she agrees) that the bark I got was contaminated, Because within 48 hours most of the pot was filled with mold. It may not survive the collar rotted pretty bad pretty fast. It is sitting out of any medium or water on a shelf and I am waiting until I see some kind of new growth to do anything with it. Basically just waiting it out to see what it does. I'm hoping maybe it throws a keiki as a last ditch reproduction effort and I can run with that.

So I went to Lowe's to return the contaminated bark, and came home with a little classic white and yellow phal off the clearance rack. I knew it was in trouble. Somewhat wrinkly leaves, no roots in the moss that I could see. But the stem and collar still looked clean. I had been reading about full water culture and wanted to experiment with something like that or other bare root types of cultivation. And this one seemed to be struggling but not so far gone that it might be a good experiment.

So I took it home, ripped (gently) all the smashed compressed sphag out of the pot. None of the roots were really any good, but it had three little root spikes at the top that were. So I washed it, cut all the dead ones off with sterilized scissors. I used tweezers to pick off any trace of medium I could find, treated it with fungicide, and let it sit on a shelf to dry for the afternoon.

Then I got a little empty and cleaned jar, and filled it with water, and put the little one in it. I had just the tip of the stem in the water. After a day or two, I could see the little root tips looked moist, so I thought yeah! ok, this could be good! well... Yesterday I noticed a bit of fungus starting in the stem between the lowest leaf and the next leaf (a good inch almost above the water line). (god damn it!) So I took it out, disinfected the jar, treated the orchid with fungicide and left it out on a shelf to dry overnight. I treated it with fungicide again this morning.

Now what.... What did I do wrong? Is this a common issue with the full water culture thing? Should I have just put the orchid ABOVE the water letting the roots grow into it? Can I put something in the water to prevent fungus? Start with a semi water culture (the soak and dry rotation)?

Suggestions?

PS I write novels I know, I'm sorry haha.