Black mush in Phalaenopsis base?

[artixmartz]

Hello, all!

I'm new in this forum because I've been looking for some place to ask about something that keeps me quite worried. This is the second Phalaenopsis I've bought my mother for Mother's Day, as the first one I got her last year ended up dying (we were real beginners and didn't water it well). Now, for this one I did as much research as there was, we've been following tutorials on how to water it and what the best conditions for it to live are. I got this one from the shop because it looked healthy enough, with lots of flowers, big green leaves and healthy roots.

We've got it since May of this year, and a couple of weeks ago the flowers started dropping. All at once. I think, if there were around twenty flowers, they all fell off within four or five days. Every day we would find two or three sitting at the base of the plant, but we thought that maybe it was time for them to drop. The problem is this: since then, one of the big, green leaves from the base just fell off this morning. Researching about what may have caused it, I found that the ones from the base may die because they are the oldest ones, so I didn't think much about it either. But taking a closer look at it, I saw that a second leaf is also getting yellow from the base.

The base of the plant (the crown?) was slightly black from where the other leaf fell. I cut out part of it and found there was a sort of black mush under it, and I really don't know what it is or how I should approach it. I was really careful not to drop any water on the base of the leaves so as not to cause crown rot. I think I've only dropped some water on it once, but it was really little and I quickly used cotton and paper to remove it.

I'm attaching some pictures in case anyone knows what this might be. I live in Spain and it's been really hot lately, with temperatures reaching 30ºC even inside of the house.

This was how it looked like before (What was that small, mushroom shaped thing coming out of it? Any ideas?)


And this is how it looks now:



I was thinking about repotting it, too, should I do that?