Dracula diabola, too wet, lost some roots.

[FL_Orchid_Collector]

This Drac. arrived a week ago and I mounted it to a piece of wood in my terrarium. It was too wet and most roots rotted (they weren't bad on arrival) but the leaves stayed nice and it's sending out some new growths which are nice and straight. Today it came out of the mount and I grabbed it before it fell in the water and with most roots gone I found that it was actually two plants. That's something I've been finding very irritating because it changes what I might want to do when I get them unpotted. Anyway it looks like the leaves are pretty happy, there's no blackening at the tips, just where they've been mechanically damaged. I'm going to remount these higher up where it's drier and I'll put one in a darker spot than the other and see which one works better. I'd appreciate any advice, and please wish me luck!

[Roberta]

I grow under very different conditions, but I have found that Dracs do best in net pots with sphagnum. You do have some good roots there. They need to stay damp, but also need good air circulation and they also are quite picky about water quality. (I had very little success with them until I switched to RO water, but my tap water is pretty hard) They don't need much fertilizer. A very good grower who I know, that grows a lot of both Dracs and Masdevallias as well as other Pleurotallids, suggests the once weekly weakly (very weakly) fertilizer regimen for most genera, but more like once a month for the Dracs.

[FL_Orchid_Collector]

I wasn't planning to fertilize in there, I'm sure the frogs do a good enough job of that. Crickets go in, Anubias nana "petite" (don't let that fool you, if they get out of the water they forget they're called petite. Underwater they look silly, tiny leaves on an inch-thick rhizome, but in the air they're around 5" leaves, maybe 3" wide and if you don't stay on top of pruning them they'll shade out all the plants below) and Amazon sword leaves come out. I'm tempted to take a cracked 10g and use it for a non-watery but humid terrarium after I get an RO unit. I'm finally glad I kept it.

[Roberta]

That fish poop is fertilizer, and likely too strong for the Dracs. ("fertilizer" can come from nature as well as from a bottle... ) They don't want a blast of nitrogen. Think of how epiphytes live in the forest - they get very, very dilute nutrients from rotting organic matter in the canopy that is dissolved in rain. So teensy amount at any one time.

[SADE2020]

I agreed with Roberta. Maybe too much of everything, even company. Draculas like to be alone, very quite and no disturb. I don't even use fertilizer one s months, 1 mother I drop some shelf and 1 very carefully no too much 1/4 of the indicated 20.20.20 and drops of magnesio-calcio. Anything stronger will burn the roots and leaves. Also, the temperature is really important a significant drop at night.

I grow in Tanks btw.