Root pitting
 

The roots of 2 of my cattleya look like this. I touched on this in a earlier post with the response being that it was from high mineral content in the water. Are there any other ideas. Because I switched up the water source and it still appears that the pitting is occurring.

2nd image

Trying to fix orientation

Looks like mechanical damage to me, more than chemical in nature - something is eating them.

It could be a nutritional issue but I would check for bugs, first. I do this by submerging the pot in water and seeing if anything climbs out of the medium. Let it soak for a good ten minutes as some things take longer to emerge.

---------- Post added at 10:23 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:21 AM ----------

I have never seen that on roots before.

Possibly tiny snails eating them? That would be my first guess, though I'm no ruling out insects.

I wanted to make sure it wasn't a watering, humidity or fertilizer issue. I use a 20/20/20 at 1/4 of the indoor strength every other watering. I'm down from once a week because they are being watered every 7 to 10 days. For humidity they sit on pebbles. Since they are in a sun room, there also happens to be a lot of other plants around.

I just repotted them about a week ago, so hopefully that helps if it was due to bugs.

When I brought them home I found two instances of what looked like mini snails. They were slightly smaller than the size of a pencil eraser. Does this sound like it matches? Little snails? I have never seen them anywhere else.

The media was pretty bad when I repotted too. Should I mix fungicide in with the next watering or should I wait another couple of weeks now that they are both in new media?

The little snails are not at all nice. They eat roots and leaves...and multiply. My daughters like the snails so we have a few as pets in a container and feed them lettuce, celery, and potato skins.

Yep. Snails. I found a pic at aos.org . I'm 98% sure that I have snail damage. Well, I thoroughly repotted them where I made an incredibly meticulous attempt at removing all old potting media. So we will see if I need to bring out the big guns.

As far as safer pesticides go anyone have ideas other than wet dog food, potatoes, caffeine or beer? I will try these but I'm always keeping my mind open to different ideas.

Sluggo isn't toxic but kills snails.