S/H transition w/o new root growth - thoughts?

[arianeos]

Hey everyone. I have 7 oncidium alliance plants new to my collection (Onc. Sharry Baby, Witch's Jewel, Pacific Passage; Oncsa. Gower Ramsey; Mltnps. Lennart Karl Gottling, Keiko Komoda, Rene Komoda) that look like they might have some insect damage. I haven't found any scale, mealy bugs, thrips, or aphids themselves but the damage is visible in a few small places.

All of these plants just went out of bloom and have dried out their flower spikes, but they don't show any new growths let alone new roots yet. Due to the possible insect damage and not wanting to introduce anything to the rest of my collection, I want to repot to get rid of anything that might be hiding in the old medium and clear the issue up faster.

That being said, I know switching them to s/h without new root growth could be a death sentence since they're a little under the weather. Has anyone here had experience just potting them up into the leca pellets & s/h pot but then draining out the reservoir after flushing? I'm considering doing that to use the leca as an inorganic medium and then only leaving the reservoir full once there's new growths and new roots, but I figured I'd check on here to see if anyone else has tried this before. I've only ever used leca with s/h, not as an inorganic medium entirely on its own.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Ray]

Your approach sounds pretty good. Keep a close eye on them, and start to leave water in the reservoir as soon as you see new roots emerging.

This time of year, with the heat and humidity of Philly summers, you ought to see new growth relatively soon, but if you want to "kick start" the process, add some KelpMax to your process.

[arianeos]

Thanks, Ray. It's definitely hit the Philly hazy, hot, & humid already. This week we had 91deg with 80-something% RH. I've got the leca soaking in all the seaweed goodness already!

[arianeos]

One more quick question for you, Ray, or anyone else. I unpotted and cleaned off the plants today. They all have new growths emerging from the pseudobulbs that just finished flowering. While those new growths have no roots whatsoever yet, the pseudobulbs that just finished flowering are actually putting out a few new root tips themselves. Time to leave the s/h reservoirs full after the flushing, you think?

[Ray]

If the plant is growing new roots, you want the environment into which they are growing to be the way you want to maintain it going forward, so "yes".

[orchidphile]

I had a big cattleya that dried out on my porch and had no roots. I split it in half and put one half directly into semihydro, with the reservoir filled, and one half in the sphag and bag method. The plant in semihydro took longer to root, but now both are in semihydro and doing equally well. I've also transitioned plants at the wrong time and all of them came around eventually.