The media they came in was very similar to 5:1:1. The two 1 gallon pots got "half" barerooted, I got probably half the media out while untangling circular roots and loosening the sides and bottom. Then they were placed in 4 gallons of gritty each and throughly watered. They have been in the shade since. Had a good rainstorm last night and come out this morning to see my silver seedling dropped maybe 30-40 white needles, 0 green needles dropped though. I'm assuming it's a stress response to shipping (took 5 days) then a semi-bare-root repot and the heat of the last few days. Could anyone ease my mind on this, I would hate for it to lose all it's white needles.

a gentle scratching of the trunk will tell you if the green cambian layer under the bark is alive.. if so.. it just went dormant.. probably due to low light.. and transplant shock ... if its green.. i would just wait.. and not with much water .. if no green.. its a goner.. ken

1/16" is too fine for the entire mix. Al's recommendation is to use the insect screen or 1/16" mesh for the Turface only, to keep the fines to a low percentage of the mix, and to minimize the money spent on Turface. According to Al, and my experience concurs, the PWT can't happen with particles 1/10th" and larger. I've had PWT in fresh gritty mix when my minimum screen was #10 / 2mm / .0787 inch - bigger mesh than window screen. That happened when I decided to pass the calcined DE reject from the #8 screening, through the smaller #10 Turface screen, and include half of it in the calcined DE portion of the mix. This was in addition to the screened Turface portion. In other words, my proportion of material finer than 1/10" was too high, filled in the spaces between the larger particles, enough to support a perched water table. Not sure why you would water twice daily, but seems to me that if the mix has been screened at 1/16", the bottom of the pot is likely saturated, not drying out, preventing air from circulating from below. HTH.

I myself being an avid user of the gritty mix for years do not have much luck either with any of my succulents unless it's a cactus and even those I have killed in it. Not because the mix stinks, but because I do, when it comes to watering properly.. I can not keep up with watering mine before the top few inches dry out and that can be every day in a hot window, hot sun, or under lights. So the very shallow roots near the surface die back and then once a water again, the once healthy roots that use to take up water before I desiccated them in just a day will stop functioning and just rot. If you are one that can water properly, and that means every day on most occasions until the roots have grown into the mix which can be timely, you must water more frequently making sure not to wait too long between intervals. With the mix I now use, containing some peat, I can put mine on any hot surface, on my hot sunny roof, usually meaning full sun, and under hot lights in a warm room, even on a hot window sill in winter, without coming home by the end of the day to see them toasted. It's nice to see that the top layer of my mixes retained enough moisture for a day or two to give me time to water again Then too, no fear of rot even on cool days or no matter how much it rains, because I use a heck of a lot more of per lite and pumice than I do peat.