It's not unusual for the roots of plants started in water to make the transition to soil poorly. The cellular make-up of water roots is quite different from roots produced in a well-aerated medium, like perlite (though perlite isn't the best choice for spider plants because of its fluoride content and spider plant's aversion to fluoride) or screened Turface or DE. Try potting in a fresh, well-aerated medium and keeping the medium barely moist. If water roots have already formed on your plantlets, they will have difficulty extracting water from the medium, so a loose tenting arrangement will help to keep humidity up and transpirational water loss down. Some questions - I think I see fertilizer prills on the soil of the struggling plant. Did you fertilize and what with? Did you use old soil to pot the plants in? Spider plants are among the easiest plants to root because they come complete with preformed adventitious roots; so all you need is a well-aerated soil, light, and a little moisture to get them started. Best luck. Al

Shamae, How big are the bugs? I know you posted a photo, but without something whose size is known (like, for example a dime or a penny or something) placed beside them to provide context, it is hard for us to understand what size your pests are. Spider mites are roughly the size of the dot over the letter "i". They are very hard to see with the naked eye and hard to view in a photo, though once you're used to seeing them, you can flip over a leaf and look at the underside of it and see the tiny mites on the plants then. Sometimes, folks new to spider mites aren't sure if they are seeing spider mites and we tell them to hold a clean white sheet of paper underneath a plant leaf and thump it. Tiny insects the size of a period will fall onto the paper and begin moving, and if that happens, they likely have spider mites. It actually is easier to identify mites on plants by the damage they do than by seeing the mites themselves. If you can tell us more about your pests, perhaps we can help you with an ID. If, by chance, they are the same size as spider mites, I'd suspect chiggers, but the pests in your photo look larger....more like the size of aphids? Not that I'm saying they are aphids, but rather that's just the size they are. Are you here in OK? Was your compost wet or was it dry? The more info you share, the better we might be able to help you figure out what it is that you're seeing. Or at least what it isn't. Dawn

Oh whew...I am so relieved to read that nobody thinks they are spider mite webs. Whew, whew!! Is there some definitive way to determine mite webs vs spider webs? Thanks TJ. You are right. And I haven't sprayed a thing, good or bad, in the last 15 years with the mentality of "come what may" but this yard has been trying. I have never seen so many good and bad bugs in my life...and in the last month resorted to BT to kill the hornworms that are decimating my tomatoes and since I'm spraying anyway, I bought the neem which I'd read up on here. It appeared to be pretty innocuous overall, so that I used along one fence where most of my succulents live in light shade and dappled sun--that's the area where both of these photos were taken. None of it was sprayed on my edible or flowering plants, as I read that neem can damage blossoms... The only thing I have consistently used except when I lived in SF was snail bait and they seem to be having quite the blast anyway this year. Jean, we sure do! I can't confirm my neighbor ID'd what she saw correctly but upon hearing that and about two minutes before I ordered neem, lol, I did google it and Japanese Beetles were spotted in the Sacramento area, right above me, per the CA Dept of Ag. I only read one article but that was close enough for me! Ken, my spiders are year round, I'm afraid. January has much less than the other months but there is no month where I can't find spiders crawling on my plants or webbing here and there. Come spring, there's virtually no plant I can't find a spider on or at least evidence of some spider having been on it. That said, I still find it really bizarre that at this yard, for the first time ever in my gardening life, I have not seen ONE aphid. Spiders are not predators of aphids, are they? I've never seen a ladybug here either..probably because there are no aphids. Not complaining but I find it so bizarre! Thanks again, folks!

Thank you all for the helpful feedback! This plant was repotted not too long ago, and yes, at a very less than ideal time for undergoing such a transition. It had been in a nasty nursery mix and was too tempting to not get into the gritty mix, despite the mid-January timing. Since the repot, I've watered regularly and waited the two weeks prior to fertigating; it's seemed quite healthy up until this new curling development began. The plant is in a 6 inch TC pot and is much larger than the pictures convey. I suspected that my impatience led to this curling, but wasn't quite sure. Spider plants do seem to be resilient specimens though, so I am not giving up on this one. I'll keep it watered well and be sure to keep GW updated. Here are some photos from the repot!