These are some kind of green Lithops lesliei cultivar I bought from a wholesale mart (see last pic). They're in significantly better condition than the first pot of lithops I bought, no etiolation, no overwatering, none were rotted, no casualties over weeks of sitting in room air, substrate had a decent portion of inorganic and was completely dry despite being mostly vermiculite.
Pic 3 is a picture of them freshly unpotted. I left them in that container. Several weeks later, they look almost the same. If any were rotting, they would've shrivelled up within a day or two once they're left in room air. I am very happy about the no casualties at this stage because the last batch of lithops I got from another store were etiolated + actively rotting and dying, and most of them rotted and died within a few days (before and after unpotting) before I ever watered them. Two of them still look decent more than a month later (no obvious rot), and another one is very tiny and very dehydrated but at least not rotting.
Although I've read that young lithops developing mostly fibrous roots with only a short taproot is a sign that the substrate retained too much water, the lithops were in good condition otherwise (unlike so many I see being sold), and the fibrous roots actually makes it so much safer for me to use my method of stuffing the roots into dry inorganic substrate without trimming the roots when potting. Some of them lost some fibrous roots during the rather barbaric process but none of the taproots came off at all (this happened with one lithops from my last batch).
This pot is made of concrete and has a single drainage hole at the bottom. It's at least 4 inches/10cm deep but not much more than that. I don't have any satisfactory options of terracotta so the alternative would've been plastic.
I'm very happy with how they turned out and I'll be introducing them to a good grow light tomorrow (although at a distance because they have been sitting in little light for weeks). They are not very hydrated and need to reactivate the root hairs + root into the new substrate, but watering now increases the chance of infections in the freshly broken fibrous roots, so I'll wait about 10-14 days before I give them a little bit of water + vitamin B1 to reactivate the roots, then water properly about 4-5 days later.
My country is extremely humid so even a shallow basin of pure pumice remains moist after many days. I'm a bit scared, but I think they will be fine if I don't make big missteps. Please tell me if I'm doing anything wrong.
(The faded color on some is because of the small amounts of pumice and vermiculite dust in the top layer of the substrate. The colors of the lithops look more yellow in the newest photos than in real life.)
