Sudden fungal/bacterial attack on my Vanda in spike

[Shadeflower]

Vanda's have got a bit of a reputation for being tricky unfortunately and I think this would be an example it seems.
From my limited experience I would say Vanda's need to adapt to their new environment first. The roots it previously grew are rarely suited for the new environment they get shipped to. I expect as standard for any new Vanda at mine to take one year to adapt to my climate and grow roots adapted to such climate. Then one more year to build up strength after having been set back with not yet adapted roots.
If you buy an orchid that was already being grown in your climate it makes a big difference to the health of the Vanda. When they are stressed they are susceptible and they will be highly stressed in the first year of owning them if they change their climate a lot so once one can get it past the first year then it should be able to continuously gain strength after that.

I am going to guess that stress will have played a big part for this newly acquired orchid. One cannot see the signs of stress when they occur but if one can help the orchid out and it recovers then the signs of recovery make what the signs of stress were quite obvious.
Hope it makes it.

[cuckoo]

I read someone's blog where they found that feeding with high nitrogen fertilizer during the rainy season made their Vandas highly susceptible to bacterial infection. This might have been the case with mine. I unpotted and checked the roots - they are fine. The transition from bare root to lava rock in terracotta hasn't been too bad for them. I hadn't fertilized my orchids for several weeks as they were outdoors and already getting watered by the rain gods more frequently than I would like. But i noticed that they weren't growing much at all so I forced my lazy self to fertilize all the orchids. Some got high potassium and other high nitrogen. This one had already set bud so I gave it high nitogen, probably for the first time since I got it without any spike couple of months back. The infection showed up the next day or so after feeding I think. My two cents if this helps anyone out there.

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You might consider subscribing to the Motes Orchids E-mail list. They are in southern Florida and deal with high humidity. They send out a monthly newsletter covering growing orchids in Florida. They address fungal and bacterial issues.

[cuckoo]

I know it has been a while but just wanted to update that the poor thing died a few days later. The rot got to the crown and that was that.