Masdevallia mystery leaf loss, multiple plants, help!
I have a mystery on my hands and I need help solving it. I moved all of my orchids down to a new basement setup that I just completed about 2 months ago. It is two very large tables with LED lights overhead (no heat produced) and a fan for air circulation. The whole basement is stable in temps as far as I can tell, I go down at dif times of the day and it's always the same temp. I grow mainly masdevallias and cattleyas but it's the masdevallias which have now had all the problems.
Many of my masdevallias mysteriously are dropping alot of leaves. Much more than normal and I have even lost a few. Some of the leaves are turning yellow and some are turning mushy and some are turning dry and crispy. But this has only happened in the last 3 days, everything was great with lots of growth beforehand. Masdevallias are notoriously picky and any changes can cause leaf drop, believe me I already know this. But I think something pretty major happened to cause many of them to react in this way.
I'm wracking my brain: did I underwater? overwater? was there a sudden drop or rise in temps? We turn the heat down at night to 62 and raise it during the day, could that have an effect in the basement? I also added slow release fertilizer to every orchid about 3 weeks ago (but this is not a new treatment, this is what I normally do every 5-6 months or so.) Oh, one more mystery piece; we also raise worms for compost in the basement and there was a mass suicide (many, many crawled out of the bins to the floor) at the same time, which may or may not be related.
I know that changes in culture can do this and moving to the basement has been a huge learning curve, new temps, new water schedule, new light levels. But it's been a few months already and this is all very sudden. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! Thanks
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