Is the last one a Dorstenia?

Are you using garden soil?

The only recommendation I have when using the store bought plus perlite is to definitely use a top dressing. I use crushed granite. I like chick grit size but it's so expensive. I'm going to ask a landscaping place instead of the feed store. Maybe I'm buying it with the wrong label so it makes it more expensive lol.

The reason for this is so when you water, the perlite will stay down in the soil solution instead of just floating at the top which would lead to well draining top on top of a layer of sludge.

suivezmoi

You should go for walk and pick some smaller pebbles-rocks. Wash them well, and you have nice and free top-dressing. Or go to dollar store, buy bag of glass marbles, kind kids play with. You could find some 'fancier' colored glass stones, but they are more $. Or get a bag of larger beads...or shells if you are close to a beach.

I don't buy things on line and rocks may be too heavy...I use mostly grit (turkey, it is bigger than what goes to gritty mix; I pay under $10/50lb bag)

I also have some small pebbles, leftover from a landscape job friend gave me (pea gravel) - so that was free.

I got about 10 gal of quite large aquarium gravel (too big for the mix) free, from freecycle. Price: my time and gas to drive to pick it up.

I have chickens so I already have chicken grit on hand....but using it for the plants is very expensive lol.

I use a small crushed granite or a small pea gravel for top dressing, fossils , river rock ... anything and everything. I am over 90 pots, too. I get a 10 gallon pot and head to a bulk landscape supply place and I think the 10 gallons runs about $4. If I drive to a river, I take a bucket and a 10gallon pot and fill up. I find some really beautiful rocks down there also. I also like to pick up some course river sand. The river has places where the course stuff collects and places where it is really fine.

50lb of grit goes long way, I find it least expensive of substrates. I have now over 200 pots with succulents, and all have chicken grit in the mix (many have 50% of total volume), and I add it to large pots of other plants I have (non succulent). In US, it is even less $ - see Mara's post above.

I can't get the small chicken grit here in Austin. I tried. So I use the small , But larger than grit crushed Fairland rose granite. I have taken some screen and washed it. and was able to further separate out the size of the chunks. I like the look of the larger chunks on my large aloes.. One can wash the decomposed granite through a screen ridding it of all the clay in it and get some very nice grit that way also. I was able to buy some " quarter minus" DG that had been strained of the large stuff before I got it.I can understand that if you are in an apartment, that this is a hard and messy thing to do.

Mara, I like the look of rose granite much more.

And larger chunks look very good with bigger plants.

You have always very nice container plantings...Rina