Need help, My Aeranthes is not happy!

[Becca]

Hi Everyone!

I know I have posted questions before on my Aeranthes ramosa and even bugged a few people via pm's to get some additional info.....but my Aeranthes just isn't doing so well....I should have listened to Ray when he told me I was doing the beginners purchase based off of looks and not considering growing cultures or level of difficulties for growing.

Anyways, I now understand why the leaves looked so tattered when I first received it. I battled several rounds of bacterial infection on the tender new leaf growths but I seemed to have gotten through it and it has been a while since I have had this problem.

But now, starting a few months ago one of the lower leaves turned yellow and died. I repotted since I had a feeling that the potting medium had went sour. I used medium sized bark chunks with a tad bit of a finer bark mix with perlite in the middle, but not much. I think most of the roots were not good, but wasn't sure, they felt firm but I hadn't seen roots like these before, they were sort of wiry and stiff if you now what I mean and were a off white color, so I wasn't sure if they were really good or bad roots and I tried the pull test to, which worked some. Anyways I repotted it into coarse bark, I read several different threads to use fine, bark, coarse bark, etc....so I was pretty confused and that is why I sent pm's to a few individuals for advice.

Anyways, I was watering the other day and realized one of the lower leaves was breaking off and then I saw it was all dark colored. It was hard to see at first glance because the leaves are so dark green and I was told to give them more light. And upon further inspection I noticed the lower leaf on the opposite side had the same color. The base of the stem is also yellow. I am sure this is due to the roots, but I have already repotted (about a month or so ago) and I am just hoping there is something I can do for this poor baby. I really don't want to lose it but I don't think it is looking so good. I have attached several pictures. Can anyone help me or give me advice?

P.S....I had trouble with the photo sizes even after resizing them. I can attache the pictures as a pdf if that will work ok for everyone? I have never had this issue before with resizing and I was using the tool I downloaded off of here