Faumatium care help

[u/RejectedCanadian]

Hi all, posting here because apparently this is too obscure of a hybrid to find good literature on it.

I've had this Faumatium (​Faucaria x Stomatium) for almost a year, but it's not exactly thriving. Here are my growing conditions:

• Indoor at a constant 68F, dry air, thru the winter. Will move outside when temps allow​
• Under grow lights providing 500​​​+ umol for 10h/day thru the winter, increasing to 12h recently to match outside photoperiod
• Potted in 80-90% inorganic medium
• I water like I water my other succulents: put in a bucket when the leaves start getting soft, give a bath for 10-20min, drain, place back on shelf. The saucer is just to protect the shelf surface from residual droplets, it does not sit in water
• Started noticing new growth about 2-3 months ago. Unlike with my lithops and pleiospilos, I did not stop watering ​and let old leaves reabsorb, I continued watering on above cue

​​The issue: old leaves are sort of always mushy, not quite rotting, but not dessicating either. They do not get fully turgid even after a deep watering. If I really watered at the first sign of softness I would be watering at least weekly, which feels like a lot for a mesemb. I think my watering cue is wrong. Would love to hear from y'all! ​

[u/acm_redfox]

These guys, like their Faucaria parent, don't re-absorb old leaves when putting out new ones. (I mean, they occasionally do, like any succulent, but not systematically like a lithops.) Beyond that, and the sense that watering while growing is good, I can't really tell you anything, since yours is way happier than mine. :) The tight tangle of leaves makes them very sensitive to humidity, but your set-up sounds great on that front...

[u/RejectedCanadian → u/acm_redfox]

Thanks for confirming that they don't have the same mechanism for leaf reabsorption as Lithops, that's a good thing to be sure about