Erin, Pleiospilos are not anywhere near as sensitive to water as lithops. I know the rule about not watering when they're splitting but I really think that applies mostly to Lithops and some other cousins. All my Pleios' live outside and get watered regularly and rained on along with almost everything else. I even have them in mixed containers with Crassula and Adromischus and haven't had any problems. I remember when you got these because I was insanely jealous of you finding that 'royal flush' at HomeDepot. If you haven't watered them since then, I'd recommend it.

It liiiiives!! Cutting off the rot worked wonderfully. But I think the "surgery" worked in my favor because I spotted the rot almost immediately. Its doing just fine now, it's even sprouting new leaves! I took pictues of the rot and the "surgery" if anyone is interested. Eventually, new leaves will replace the old and it will look like nothing ever happened.

In my experience, sometimes a store-bought plant will fail on you and you'll never really know why. It could be that when you bring it home, it struggled to adjust to the new environment. I've also noticed that sometimes, up-potting and repotting will shock a new plant. Regarding watering in my experience, after it's done flowering and you aren't seeing that fresh new pair of leaves start pushing through, it's okay to water. This mesemb is supposed to have 2 sets of leaves, not only 1 pair like yours currently does. But don't panic, it'll be ok like that. It may or may not take several months for it to grow anything new. Like Kara said, it should be ok to pot up. You don't need to water it for a while. like 2 weeks maybe. I look for cues from the plant itself on when it wants water. I've noticed that with these plants, if the outermost leaves are a bit soft, NOT MUSHY- just if it loses a bit of that turgidity, it wants a nice drink. And a note about watering, especially in gritty mix. You should not live in fear of watering. If you water sparsely because you are nervous, the plant will lose the finer roots that help it take up water. And if you eventually give it a nice deep watering, it might die because there is suddenly too much water it can't absorb. But with that kind of gritty mix, I don't think you will run into this too-much-water-problem... Remember though, that if the months are turning colder, it will not need as much water.

Wow! Our Wal-Mart just has pots with two or three dying succulents:( I hope I can get lucky like you, really good find!! They're very pretty:)