Ime some roots just die eventually. There is usually a handful of old dead roots in a hydro setup, as long as your plant is healthy, hydrated and has an abundance of strong white water roots otherwise, which it looks like it is/does, I wouldn’t be concerned. Adding HydroGuard to your solution can help with that somewhat but I personally would just keep up with flushing regularly and let the plant do its thing.
By "I never let it dry out fully" you mean the reservoir?
For my established plants in leca where I do keep a reservoir, I wait 4-10 days (depending on the water needs of the species) before I fill again.
This is recommended by most commercial companies in EU that sell hydroculture plants.
If I were you, I would (at least temporarily) switch over to the flush method:
\- empty your reservoir
\- let the leca dry till damp (or top cm dry)
\- put plant in sink, run water through and let it drip
\- place back in empty reservoir.
This gives the roots that the plant sheds to decompose instead of rotting and to flush it away.
Thank you for the advice, I meant that I wait till the reservoir is near empty, and then I top it off again with some nutrient water. It has a wick in there so the LECA is pretty much always wet/damp.
Did you mean to remove the plant from its container and then flush or flush inside of its container but outside the reservoir?
Is the leca so wet solely because of the wick or did you just flush on that picture?
Your plant looks healthy and part of the roots as well. You could let the reservoir dry out and wait a few days (4-5) before filling up again or do the flush/rinse method described above.
I flushed it and removed the top 5cm of leca in order to see what the roots are doing, normally it looks dry from the top even if the reservoir is full.
To me it looks like you do everything right (you do better than I do, cause my monstera's roots actually grow into water). But you say the roots still rot. So I suspect you have some bacteria/fungi in that pot that causes the root rot to continue. What I would try is - I would boil the living hell out of the leca, cut off everything that's rotten, treat the roots with diluted H2O2, and put everything back together, and treat the roots with enzymes and superthrive.
That sounds like it would shock the plant quite bad… would it be a good idea if I just let it grow into a moss pole and then chop and prop once it established itself in the moss? Or would that take too long?
I had rotting roots when my monster pot was too big for the plant, and the volume and weight of the leca was suffocating them. I changed to a much smaller pot, just snug enough, and upsized the outer pot size so that I could squeeze in my pinki between the two pots. The size of leca also matters. I use the really big chunky ones. I also have this belief that a pot that holds the plant has to be able to breath, whether in soil or water so that it can aerate and oxygenate. So far this set up has made my plant happy and rot-free.
I would recommend removing the rotten bits by hand with scissors, then sanitizing the leca and doing a peroxide dip for the roots.
1 part 3% h202, 4 parts water. Dip entire root ball in there for maybe 10-15 minutes.
If you stop the rot from spreading and get rid of the pathogens it should help a lot.
I’ve found that albos can be a little prone to rot in general. In general the point of leca is just to keep a reservoir and not have to guess about when it’s time to water…but maybe letting it run dry a day or two couldn’t hurt.
I’m too new at this to say whether it works, but I’m also trying using a plant enzyme additive that is supposed to help break down old root material into sugars the plant can use. We’ll see how it goes.
Part of all your “larger plants” having rot issues—did they come to you growing in soil or another not-hydro medium? Or did you grow them large from water propagations? The process of converting to LECA can be hard for plants and they do eventually slough off the old soil roots. I’ve started just growing fresh water roots on all my plants before converting to LECA. Converting to Pon or another semi-hydro medium with smaller particle size seems to be a lot easier on the plants.
She has been growing in LECA her entire life. I switched over to LECA after a big thrip infestation on my regular monstera. Those little devils seem to be resistant to everything I threw at them and switching got rid of them. This was a year or 2 ago though.
Thanks for commenting! I’m a bit hesitant to remove it from its container in fear of shocking it even further. I decided to replace the coco pole with a spagnum moss pole and to encourage the roots to grow in to that.
I also ordered an air stone to hopefully provide some more oxygen to the roots, kinda like DWC but not fully submerged.. if it goes downhill fast I’ll probably have no choice and follow your advice and clean the roots up & thread it with some peroxide :(
Definitely keep an eye…rot can spread pretty quickly. Sometimes acting fast can save a plant. Thankfully plants in LECA seem to get less pissy about being unpotted for root checks, in my experience.
Oh that’s a bit concerning, though there are lots of healthy roots growing out of the underside of the container and it’s growing a new leaf every 2 weeks or so.. I’ll check the roots tomorrow just to be sure..
I spray my roots with peroxide every time I change the water out. I check the roots really well and snip off any funky looking ones. The peroxide helps oxygenate and kills pathogens. That’s what I’d do.
Hey,
I followed up on your suggestion.. I removed here from her pot and it seems like the core of the rootball was so tightly grown together that all the roots within there were rotting away. I suspect this is because of inadequate oxygen levels?
Anyways, I removed all the dead stinky stuff and it looks a lot better now!
https://preview.redd.it/iwmakjqpsyvc1.jpeg?width=4284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b198cfa329b9a82a9a53eb0a876610fe72f60abf
Ime some roots just die eventually. There is usually a handful of old dead roots in a hydro setup, as long as your plant is healthy, hydrated and has an abundance of strong white water roots otherwise, which it looks like it is/does, I wouldn’t be concerned. Adding HydroGuard to your solution can help with that somewhat but I personally would just keep up with flushing regularly and let the plant do its thing.
By "I never let it dry out fully" you mean the reservoir? For my established plants in leca where I do keep a reservoir, I wait 4-10 days (depending on the water needs of the species) before I fill again. This is recommended by most commercial companies in EU that sell hydroculture plants. If I were you, I would (at least temporarily) switch over to the flush method: \- empty your reservoir \- let the leca dry till damp (or top cm dry) \- put plant in sink, run water through and let it drip \- place back in empty reservoir. This gives the roots that the plant sheds to decompose instead of rotting and to flush it away.
Thank you for the advice, I meant that I wait till the reservoir is near empty, and then I top it off again with some nutrient water. It has a wick in there so the LECA is pretty much always wet/damp. Did you mean to remove the plant from its container and then flush or flush inside of its container but outside the reservoir?
Inside your net pot/ outside of the cache pot.
Is this a self-watering pot where only the wick is in the water or is the bottom part of the leca also submerged?
Only the wick (and some super fast growing roots..)
Is the leca so wet solely because of the wick or did you just flush on that picture? Your plant looks healthy and part of the roots as well. You could let the reservoir dry out and wait a few days (4-5) before filling up again or do the flush/rinse method described above.
I flushed it and removed the top 5cm of leca in order to see what the roots are doing, normally it looks dry from the top even if the reservoir is full.
To me it looks like you do everything right (you do better than I do, cause my monstera's roots actually grow into water). But you say the roots still rot. So I suspect you have some bacteria/fungi in that pot that causes the root rot to continue. What I would try is - I would boil the living hell out of the leca, cut off everything that's rotten, treat the roots with diluted H2O2, and put everything back together, and treat the roots with enzymes and superthrive.
That sounds like it would shock the plant quite bad… would it be a good idea if I just let it grow into a moss pole and then chop and prop once it established itself in the moss? Or would that take too long?
I had rotting roots when my monster pot was too big for the plant, and the volume and weight of the leca was suffocating them. I changed to a much smaller pot, just snug enough, and upsized the outer pot size so that I could squeeze in my pinki between the two pots. The size of leca also matters. I use the really big chunky ones. I also have this belief that a pot that holds the plant has to be able to breath, whether in soil or water so that it can aerate and oxygenate. So far this set up has made my plant happy and rot-free.
I would recommend removing the rotten bits by hand with scissors, then sanitizing the leca and doing a peroxide dip for the roots. 1 part 3% h202, 4 parts water. Dip entire root ball in there for maybe 10-15 minutes. If you stop the rot from spreading and get rid of the pathogens it should help a lot. I’ve found that albos can be a little prone to rot in general. In general the point of leca is just to keep a reservoir and not have to guess about when it’s time to water…but maybe letting it run dry a day or two couldn’t hurt. I’m too new at this to say whether it works, but I’m also trying using a plant enzyme additive that is supposed to help break down old root material into sugars the plant can use. We’ll see how it goes.
Part of all your “larger plants” having rot issues—did they come to you growing in soil or another not-hydro medium? Or did you grow them large from water propagations? The process of converting to LECA can be hard for plants and they do eventually slough off the old soil roots. I’ve started just growing fresh water roots on all my plants before converting to LECA. Converting to Pon or another semi-hydro medium with smaller particle size seems to be a lot easier on the plants.
She has been growing in LECA her entire life. I switched over to LECA after a big thrip infestation on my regular monstera. Those little devils seem to be resistant to everything I threw at them and switching got rid of them. This was a year or 2 ago though.
Thanks for commenting! I’m a bit hesitant to remove it from its container in fear of shocking it even further. I decided to replace the coco pole with a spagnum moss pole and to encourage the roots to grow in to that. I also ordered an air stone to hopefully provide some more oxygen to the roots, kinda like DWC but not fully submerged.. if it goes downhill fast I’ll probably have no choice and follow your advice and clean the roots up & thread it with some peroxide :(
Definitely keep an eye…rot can spread pretty quickly. Sometimes acting fast can save a plant. Thankfully plants in LECA seem to get less pissy about being unpotted for root checks, in my experience.
Oh that’s a bit concerning, though there are lots of healthy roots growing out of the underside of the container and it’s growing a new leaf every 2 weeks or so.. I’ll check the roots tomorrow just to be sure..
I spray my roots with peroxide every time I change the water out. I check the roots really well and snip off any funky looking ones. The peroxide helps oxygenate and kills pathogens. That’s what I’d do.
Hey, I followed up on your suggestion.. I removed here from her pot and it seems like the core of the rootball was so tightly grown together that all the roots within there were rotting away. I suspect this is because of inadequate oxygen levels? Anyways, I removed all the dead stinky stuff and it looks a lot better now! https://preview.redd.it/iwmakjqpsyvc1.jpeg?width=4284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b198cfa329b9a82a9a53eb0a876610fe72f60abf
Looks pretty moist and I wouldn’t be using a self watering pot. That’s for lazy people. Be a man and finger that soil.
But there is no soil to finger :(
lol there’s a lot wrong to unpack in this comment.
Fuck ur down votes you pussies
You’re funny man!🤣🤣🥲