Your Caribbean red looks healthy in the picture, minus the wrinkling. I sometimes have the same problem with the exact plant. I have 10 of them, plus 12 ghost peppers, plus 8 chocolate habas, and a few more different varieties of hot pepper plants. All and All I have over 70 hot pepper plants and have been growing for nine years and even crossed a few species. "NO" it is not a bug problem. Over the years growing hot peppers plants, I have noticed a few things that affect my plants. (1) How hot is it where you live? When a plant grows new leaves at night then gets hammered by very hot days of 100 degrees or hotter like in Texas the structure of the leaves deform especially with little humidity. The cell walls harden before they can fully develop. When I control the sun�s contact everything goes back to normal. People have the idea the more sun the better. That�s "BS" when I control the temperature in my green house below 98 degrees and the sun�s contact my plants get huge. Last year my ghost peppers got over eight feet tall and produced around 100 pounds of product. "Think about it" plants thrive in their habitats� "specific soil, Temperature, humidity, PH, and rain". If you plant them in the ground and did nothing to help them, they would be dead in no time, unless they are native to that area or live in same environment. (2) PH can affect them. Try to save rain water. (3) Try to stay away from over fertilizing them and over watering them. When you do excessive watering your plants will stop absorbing nutrients and they will stop growing roots, keeping them smaller in size. They need to dry out a bit to absorb oxygen unless you are doing hydroponics. I only fertilize around 4 � 5 times a season.

Have you planted it too deep perhaps? The soil level must be exactly the same as it was in the pot. If it's fairly new, you could take the chance and raise it. Was the hole wide enough? If it's clay, you need to dig a fairly big hole and put plenty of compost in it to allow the roots to take hold and spread. Don't feed it anymore, you don't feed sick plants. Give it some Seasol on a regular basis, keep it well watered and cross your fingers. And wait. We had a similar problem with 2 lime trees, replacements for one which lasted over 20 years, which looked after itself. They're still slow but at least are looking better and starting to flower. Don't give up unless they really die. You'll be surprised at how they can recover and send out new shoots, probably in spring.

I re-potted my seed grown sweetlee tangerine at this comparable time of the year. I placed it in shade. for about 2 weeks and introduced it to sun light as the days got shorter. It didn't take long before the increase in light matched the length of day. It did very well. I ruffed up the few roots that were beginning to wrap. Its as easy as 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286........ Click toi see YouTube video of how easy it is to transplant. You may need to do a lot more root prunning as my tree was 1/8 inch diameter at the base Here is a link that might be useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AkMFbhlgB0

Gosh! I'm not sure I can answer all those! I will endeavour to find out pH values.... We bought it from a nursery locally which we have used many times before. It appears to be bug free. We live in Auckland New Zealand, so it's our winter at present. When we potted it into the plastic tub it is in we fertilised and have used citrus food again recently. It is on a North facing deck, so does get a lot of sun when it's out. The soil appears to be draining well - I checked by sticking a hand in and guessing! Thanks, Patty & Mike.