Vanda roots shriveling in sections

[vegetalmatter]

I've been lurking on this forum for awhile and this is my first thread. I will have to take some proper photos of my setup and share them soon but for now I am hoping to get some extra eyes and brains on what could be happening to my Vanda kultana gold

I brought this one home from a local nursery back in February of this year. I grow it bare root. My watering method is nightly 45-60 min soaks in a 10 gallon pail full of Austin, Texas tap water with 1 tablespoon of K-Lite. I change this water maybe every 2 weeks. Every 3 or 4 weeks I do a soak of tap water + KelpMax.

For the first few weeks, it was doing pretty well I think. Lots and lots of new roots (prob from the kelpmax) that were growing very fast. Leaves are a granny smith color, not wrinkled, and new leaves at the crown were noticeably growing as well.

In the last week or so I've noticed that most of the new root tips had gone dormant. And most concerning is that some roots that use to be fat and plump started shriveling in segments. (see photos) This is happening to quite a few of the older roots. It appears that new roots are staying plump, just dormant. Any idea what's going on?

(Also want to note that the brown-ish color on the roots are probably due to the fact that I used to soak other orchids in the same pail () and bark tanins probably leached out and stained them)

[SouthPark]

VM ...... nice big plant there. Maybe just check humidity in the growing area. The temperatures are likely fine there. Does the growing area have some nice gentle air-movement too?

Roots becoming dormant and staying plump is ok. It's only if a significant number of roots appear to take a bad turn (as in dying) ----- then that would be concerning. The main thing is leaves staying in good shape, and majority of roots not shriveling up.

[vegetalmatter]

I do have a ceiling fan running on low 24/7. Humidity is probably not too great The cheap hygrometers I have gives me 40-50%. so far it is only a few roots that are shriveling so maybe I am worrying too much. Time will tell

[Ray]

The most-recent Austin water quality report isn't very helpful, but doing a bit more digging, it appears you have somewhat hard water with moderate alkalinity.

I don't imagine that's all that bad, but for daily soaking, I'd do two things differently: cut the fertilizer addition in half and not reuse the water at all, let alone for a couple of weeks. You're bound to have evaporation over time, concentrating the solute. Even if you "top it up" before each soak, you're still concentrating the dissolved solids in the water, and who knows what the plant is doing to the solution?

[estación seca]

Get Martin Motes' book on growing Vandas, and sign up for the Motes Orchids free monthly E-mail vanda growing newsletter. I'm guessing your problem is a combination of low humidity, mechanical damage from moving the plant daily and reusing water. You already promised not to reuse water in another thread. When I moved my Vandas from the house to the humid sunroom, the roots improved quickly.

[vegetalmatter]

Thank you all for the helpful suggestions.

I do promise to stop reusing the soaking water...

I might've underestimated the flexibility of Vanda roots at first because I found that with careful maneuvering, I'm able to fit the whole root system in a plastic 5 gallon pail, which is WAY more manageable than the giant 10 gallon galvanized steel thing I was using.

My new strategy is to keep a 5 gallon pail in the bathroom closet. Each night I pull out the pail, fit the vanda in it, turn on the shower and let it wet the entire plant, leaves and all, until the pail is full of water. I then turn off the water and let her sit in the filled pail for about 30 mins and call it a night

[vegetalmatter]

Update..
This morning I found this lil nub of a spike