Odontoglossum/oncidium help needed

[indiasbelly]

Hello:

First, I want to say that I think this board is amazing. I have learned all sorts of things in the couple of days that I have been here reading posts. This is exactly the resource I have been looking for.

I am hoping for a little help with a new orchid I bought. I am inadvertently killing it. I got it from a local grocery store and the tag states that it is an Odontoglossum/oncidium intergeneric from Matsui Nursery in Salinas, CA.

I put it in a spot where my Phalaenopsis does fine (when in bloom - not sunny enough when I am trying to grow), and one of the leaves turned yellow and dropped off within a week.

I moved it to another spot, closer to the window, thinking that it needed more light. My experience with the one phalaenopsis I've kept going and blooming is that my house doesn't have many spots with enough bright light. The flowers started to wilt and another leaf started turning yellow.

The flowers have almost all dropped off and the spike/stem is almost completely brown.

I've got some pictures of its current state here:

Orchids - a set on Flickr

I suspect that the issue is that I am not watering it enough. I found that I had been overwatering my phalaenopsis and went to a once a week watering schedule. From reading about this type/similar types of orchids on this board, it seems like this plant might need more water than that.

If it helps, I bought another orchid from the same grocery store a week later and it is doing great. It's a small phalaenopsis.

Any advice would be appreciated. I feel like I need to address this soon if I want to avoid losing the whole plant. As it is, I am very sad that I lost the blooms. They were so pretty!

Thanks very much!
Christina

[neb]

and to the board

Your plant doesn’t look to be that dehydrated so it could be a matter of what’s in the water. It seams odd for the leaf to drop in a week. It could also just be the plants reaction to a sudden change of environment.

[indiasbelly]

Thanks for the response.

Should I use purified water instead?

And if it's shock, do I just wait it out?

I should also maybe mention that the damage to the one leaf that you can see on the pictures is from a cat. I don't think he's still going at it. If he isn't, could it still be recovering from that? If he is still chewing on it a bit, could that cause this much of a reaction?

It looks like a silly question when I type it out, but I'm so used to plants that are fine being an occasional cat snack. And the cats don't snack on my phalaenopsis because the leaves aren't nice and thin and enticing like they are on this one.

Thanks again,
Christina

[neb]

Any distilled water will be fine, you will need to use a fertilizer made for RO or distilled water. Every thing that I have seamed to like it when I started using one of the MSU fertilizers.