Yes you are catching on. The plant still need more sun, and less water, for insurance cut off a stem that is getting roots and plant it. You must realize these are winter growers and not summer growers, mine flower in December and start to grow after the flowers dry up, starting about January, they need air circulation, and cool air, they need soil that drains rapidly, they don't like living in an apartment with a heater going. They are east African plants, and are domant when it is very hot. I have 24 different, so have a little experence. Pirate Girl lives in New York she may have a lot to add to this. I can see that the leaf nodes are still far apart this tells me more sun is needed and less water. Don't treat like it is your pet. Don't water it from the top, water from the bottom, don't mist the plant. No peat moss in the mix, red wood med. size would do much better. I don't normally respond to 'Crassula Ovata' problems any more because it just gets out of hand. Good Luck I hope you will enjoy your plant and stops giving you all of this trouble. The black spots are caused by cultural problems. Gasteria species also haved this problem. Norma

Clover, I have had mine on the fireplace mantle for several months, which is appoximately 6-8 feet from my south facing patio doors. We have actually used the fireplace a few times in the past few weeks. Could that be the reason? Right now, I have the plant under my florescent light above my sink.

Cool your willing to use a make shift gritty mix. May want to sift some of the peat materail from the BBS bagged C&S soil as well. What remains after sifting is some darker bark pieces that looks like a finer mulch and some forest humus. Useable yield may vary, would think one bag of BBS unsifted bag O'crap should yield enough for all of them. You could also ( with some extra time on your hands) pick up a bag of orchid bark smaller size is better but any size will work from a BBS as well . After soaking them in warm water for a while the chunks will be eaiser to ( by hand) break it into smaller barkier pieces. Prior to sifting any especialy for Perlite I'd suggest to use some sort of mask for beathing protecing. Big drainage hole ? As in orchid pot drainage hole big ? The demo pic is a bit off. less humor or more fun ? Blue arrows. look sort of good as ASAP potting candidates for some practice for you but if me I'd cut them for newer cleaner root. Red lines suggest cutting them for re rooting and potted later Purple circle I'm Sort of mixed on this one. It can go either way. Bigger can survive longer but adapts more slowly.

If it is not stable, you could support it with larger rocks until roots re-establish themselves.Where leaves are broken, it will scab over. If the looks bother you, leaves could be pruned off, now or later.