Flowering Bonsai Momma Shark

This was a stressful week for both me and Momma! She became VERY stressed (drooping, discolouration, slow growth). I knew that I had been introducing a lot of stressors to her world: - moved her to a new box, and introduced CO2 - changed from bottom-feeding Autopot to top-feeding Blumats - significant restructuring of her “architecture” including bending, tying down and pruning back to 1-2 nodes on each branch - But, this seemingly sudden turn for the worst seemed to be due to more than that. Thankfully, I think I figured out what happened ... various consultations helped me understand that when using Autopots, the top 1-2” of coco (which is very dry with the bottom feeding) becomes very high in salts. Consequently, when I switched to top-down Blumats, I was likely slowly washing that salt buildup from the top layer down to the root zone (already compressed and bound in an undersized pot), causing damage. So, I did a very thorough top-down flush with Clearex in balanced water to reset the medium. After some drying time, I slowly started manually adding a weak nute solution to the Autopot tray until I was seeing her drinking it up. Top layer of coco became dry again as desired. Colour improved and growth picked up again. By the end of this week she was looking perky once again! >> PLAN: - continue to veg; gradually remove unwanted thin branches - continue to develop “table” structure to maximize use of space - transplant into 5 gal SmartPot that will be placed in a new Autopot XL tray (both arriving in about 1 week) - Flip ‘n’ Flower!