r/Lophophora

Hello I had this fellow for a little while now and he was omce very plump and round and now its becoming flat. Ive watered it many times and its even produced 2 flowers since ive gotten it. But Im not sure if it's not absorbing water because of the soil or if this is something thag just naturally happens would love any and all advice if I shoild repot or just un pot to check the roots. Just don't know where to start.

What am I looking for specifically? I've read a few guides but I'm still second guessing myself.

Planted 7/22. Lw,Nf

I know there rough. They were knocked over. Also. Dose an albino NEED to be grafted and if so when?

[Noob]

Newest pic is #1, oldest pic is last

Mix

Clay mixture is a top dressing , only half an inch or a quarter inch thick

Incase anyone is curious it’s: clay, granite grit, tiny bit of horticulture sand (all components sourced from exoterra stone desert - Sonoran ocher substrate for lizards)
a bit of diatomaceous earth, And pumice dust on top of the clay.

To make it I Sifted the sand , clay, and granite apart from the exoterra substrate, then recombined them after crushing up and wetting the clay, and made a gritty malleable paste.

Edit* Pieces of the clay are dark red, white, beige, pink etc, so I avoided using too much dark red and purple clay so my mixture stayed yellowier.
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I saved some of the granite bits and scattered some of them on top of the finished clay top dressing for aesthetic, then I dusted some pumice powder and diatomaceous earth on top to lessen the yellowy hue. I think I added a bitt of diatomaceous earth to the clay too

Went to garden store and took tiny samples of their yard mulches and rocks that they had for shoppers for the plants and rocks, I took a wide range of colours and shapes so. I could be picky with arrangement and style

Update

In the newest pic I had to fill in cracks that formed around the lophs (cracks sadly not shown in pics, they were cool - but they got too big and roots were exposed) And I only used the clay from the exoterra mix and forgot to put some sand and rocks in it to keep a yellowish gritty paste, so that’s why the soil around the lophs and edges of the pot is a bit more tan/beige and less grainy than the soil I started with last year, also Lost some “plants” over time due to messing with them too much; will be fixing this in a few months when I’m not lazy.

I manually raised the height of my lophs by gently lifting them with two butter knives while the clay was wet around the time of the second pic because I felt they were too submerged in the soil, I did do a bit of damage which has since healed

I both top and bottom watered this piece, top watering allowed me to push rocks in that got loose over time, I also dunked this guy in a few diatomaceous earth soaks due to spider mites at one point(second pic)

Separate removable inner pot to drain properly.

Can list “soil/substrate components” used under the clay top dressing if requested! It’s mostly pumice , zeolite and turface I think, but in an old post I have a more accurate ratio

I found this cutie all on it's own for sale and labelles as a willi, but the lack of any hint of pink makes me doubt that really hard

Ignore my feet lol

Bought a grow light for it and changed the soil to a more mineral one!

I can’t tell what wrong with my loph is starting to have a slight disorientation.

I'm definitely at a point where I can feel the pot bowing. Soil is 100% inorganic so, there isn't a lot of room left to give. I'm thinking a repot is due. Reading would indicate repotting heading into fall/winter isn't ideal and should be avoided. My concern is the taproot becoming compromised due to some of the mix being somewhat sharp.

Is the seasonal repotting a hard/fast guideline?

I'm going to have to cut the pot at this point so would it be safe to do so when winter kicks off and just leave it unpotted until spring?

Thanks in advance for any advice/guidance on this!

Some of you may remember by recent post with the "leave no trace" themed habitat-style lophophora staging (https://www.reddit.com/r/habitatstyle/comments/1v3bjq9/a\_leave\_no\_trace\_inspired\_habitat\_style\_setup/)

I wanted to drop a quick update because last weekend entered that staging and a few others into a local cactus show hosted by the British Cactus & Succulent Society, and the results were... well, historic and a bit hilarious.

I'm thrilled to share that I got a clean sweep of the class! This was actually the first time the BCSS has ever held a dedicated class for habitat style staging. But the best part? One of the stagings I used actually featured dead plants. I had a laugh with the judges afterards about how a staging featuring dead plants could end up winning a prize at a show where "condition" was a main judging criteria. So perhaps this is a historic first - a dead cactus winning a cactus show!

I put together a video of the whole experience here: https://www.youtube.com/@greatnorthernexotic/videos

It’s a relatively small button, but it was the second time I ever sowed cactus seeds (first being pachanoi), so it has survived a lot of seedling deaths and learning.
I lost track of labeling so it was either a fricii, diffusa, or LW huizache.

I got about 7 lophs in the mail a couple weeks ago and noticed today that most of the pots have mold growing on them. So I removed them all and dumped out all the soil and will repot them soon but first need some help figuring out where I went wrong or what I’m not taking into account.

I’ve attached pictures of the pots I got and the soil I used. I mixed the entire 5lb bag of rocks with a few handfuls of the soil, still have at least have that bag. I then put that into the pots and covered the top of the soil with just rocks. The pots are glazed ceramic. I have them indoors underneath an LED grow light.

I’ve only watered them once. I figured with the amount of rocks I used that there’s no way the soil would still be wet but sure enough when I dumped it out it was wet. I live the VA/MD area where it’s quite humid in the summer.

Should I just decrease the amount of organic soil even further, switch to terracotta pots, and get better air flow on them and maybe a heat mat?

Just came in. Glued to me now.