I have a well screened mix of Al's gritty mix composed of pine bark fines from New Zealand, the Turface Regular Mvp and crushed granite.

The problem is that this mixture killed one of my big Fiddle Leaf's. That tree was able to take a beating, insofar as I could move it, swap out soils, and it wouldn't lose leaves, and we even continue to sprouting new growths in the middle of winter as if nothing happened. I had always used the 5-1-1 mix (for many years) with great success. I'd water it every two weeks with a gallon of distilled water, and every other watering it would get a serving of Dyna-Gro Foliage Pro 9-3-6. This worked perfectly.

Then i switched it to the gritty mix before I moved it across the street to a Pilates studio i frequent (I inherited a huge Fiddle Leaf Bambino tree). I followed the directions to a T. Got the best materials available. I swapped the tree out into a planter with the new soil. Undid the rootball which wasn't too bad, was rough but not overly rough, kept spraying water on the exposed roots every 30 seconds or so so they don't dry out. I had already pre-wet the soil, but once I moved the plant into the planter/soil, i watered it again. It drained very, very fast. Far faster than the my 5-1-1 mix. The one thing the soil never got was any fertilizer. Since the Dyna-Gro Foliage Pro 9-3-6, i didn't add any gypsum to it. As i was moving it across the street, i didn't account for the wind and my big ass leaves, so it tipped over and a bunch of the soil got on the sidwalk. I tried to scoop it all back up and put the plant back but it was crooked. I got to the pilates place and a day or two later i came by and removed a lot of the soil so i could reposition the tree (it was off center and crooked). About 7 days after I originally changed the soil almost all the leave were yellowing. By 9 days, the tree was finished. Some of the higher parts of the tree did still look perky so I cut them and stuck em in water, and both of the died about a week or two later.

Was it the soil that killed it? The moving? The falling? Too much Trauma? I don't know. The idea was to use it on that tree first, and then when my new planter arrives shortly, to use it on the bigger Ficus Lyrata Bambino I inherited. After what happend with the first tree, I bought a small baby ficus lyrata bambino, swapped out the soil for the gritty mix I have and I thought it was dying too after a week. The leaves were all drooping. I decided on a whim to test the moisture and it was almost zero, so I watered it and everything perked it up pretty quickly. This has been the longest way of asking, do you find that you need to water the Gritty Mix way more often than the 5-1-1 mix? I don't want to risk killing the big tree. If that means losing $150 worth of soil and making 5-1-1, so be it. I just want to try understand where I went wrong or what might happened to learn and avoid it from happening again. Appreciate any input.

old planter/soil (the branch just dropped like that, i ziptied it up for new planter)

New planter/New soil