Over and underwatering sort of have similar symptoms. My opinion is to acclimate succulents to somewhat be outdoor ones to receive a lot of light.

When its hot and sunny, colors would pop out (your Black Prince will stay black for one) and also, you allow the soil to dry up better, further preventing overwatering.

Also ditch the containers with no potholes.

Thank you for helping! As we speak I am preparing a new hand made planter that is larger, where I will plant all of these succulents in together as a little garden arrangement.

Please explain what is peat, perlite, and how do I tell if the soil is organic as you suggest? I checked the bag of soil again, it says its "Potting Soil" and quite generic. The pebbles you see in the photos laying on top of the surface are more for decoration, they're not the smaller pebbles I mentioned I mixed in with the soil from before.

Within a few days when I finish the planter I will re-pot all of them and post photos of their bare roots. When you say to spray off the roots, what do you mean by that? Like to brush off excess soil, or spray water onto them?

I will help clear some of this up. Yes your plants are overwatered, probably with rotting roots as well, so you should transplant as soon as possible.

I am not too good at defining things, but you could always look up the definition of organic. So, something organic will be something or some substance that is growing or was once growing and contains/ed living cells. Wood, fruit, grass, peat, and leaves are all organic. Rocks, clay, and silt are not organic.

Something considered to be an organic soil would be compost, which is very organic. Perlite, I think is a sort of rocky material, and being rocky, it drains and drys really fast, since rocks do not soak up water. On the other hand, peat, and most potting soils will be organic, and able to soak up and hold in water for even a few days.

For potting succulents, I would either use a potting soil specified for succulents and cacti, which you can usually find at Home Depot or other similar stores, or make your own mix with perlite or some other rocky material, and as said above, with 50% or less of organic soil. Usually perlite can also be found at Home Depot.

When you repot, wash all the old soil off the roots, and leave the plant in a dry shaded location and barerooted, for the roots to dry out. Before planting, cut off any rotted roots and plant dry in the soil. Do not water the plant for a few days, so the cutting wounds you made can heal and remaining rot can die out.

Good luck!

~palmsandsnow

I live in SW Florida. It is wet and humid here and all my plants are outside. I have gone through different iterations of potting mix. One important thing with watering is to have a mix that drains fast and to water until it flows out of the drainage holes in the pot. This ensures that the plant's roots get water and it flushes away salt build up. I worry that your plants in the first picture did not get enough water. (Hows that for adding to your confusion? LOL)

Most potting soil is heavy on peat and retains too much water. It can dry out too much and get hydrophobic - won't get wet. When you see a pot where the soil has contracted from the side of the pot, that's peat that has gotten too dry. Now the water flows around the side of the pot and the plant is still thirsty. I started with Cactus and Succulent soil and had both problems.

So I mixed the C&S soil with 50% perlite. It still was too wet for too long for my growing conditions -

So I used the 1-1-1 Gritty Mix. Here the bark is a little to large. It is mixed with perlite (white) and NAPA oil dry (tan.) The oil dry hold water without letting the roots sit in water. It drains very quickly. I used the NAPA product because I could not find Turface, a calcined clay.

I am now trying Turface (tan) with Granite Grit (chicken grit). The bark breaks down quickly in my sub-tropical weather, so I am going without it.

I hope that helps with understanding the 'ingredients.' Please do not use sand, unless it is horticultural sand that is larger particles. It does not help drainage and compacts, preventing air from getting to the roots.

Somewhere in there will be the perfect combination for your plants. Happy growing!

Many beginners set themselves for failure without knowing it. Nice, decorative containers - no drainage holes. Dark looking mix - good, the plant is getting drink - not!, it's over-watered. Looking up things on internet - too much conflicting info, and ideas that look very nice but really do not work in the long run. Many of us have done that.

..."Few tablespoons of water"... - succulents need water just like any plants; not as often, and do not like having 'wet feet' - sitting in wet muck for too long. Appropriate mix and container with drainage will allow to water plants until water runs out of drainage holes, without creating 'wet muck' in bottom.

Soft leaves are usually sign of too much water, before you know it they will start rotting.

You need to change the soil and containers (you could keep ones you have but they need drainage holes drilled).

Read about what each of your plants require as watering frequency and light requirements before putting them into community pot.

As much sunlight as possible is good for succulents. Many growers in colder regions have supplemental lighting set up for dark winter days.

Great advice as what to do from previous posters - good luck and ask any further questions you may have...
Rina

I thank all of you for your help. This morning I took out the problem succulents and brushed off the dirt as best they would allow. Could you help me identify what is root rot, how do the roots look if they're healthy or if they are rotted? The smaller succulents at the bottom all have relatively shorter roots, and the soil around them was dry. The bigger succulent in the top photo had tightly compact soil around its roots that I found almost impossible to break off without tearing out all its roots with it! It was completely bone dry, I think that is what you all meant by hydrophobic; it was so tight and dry no water was getting through. In the photo you can see some water droplets, where I sprayed lightly with a spray bottle onto the dry soil.

All the arrangements you see above are temporary, my main goal is to prepare them all for the nice, larger planter I am creating. I live outside of the US, so I am afraid any brand names or chain stores you mention won't be of any use to me, 'tis why I am trying to make with the best I have, or find similar products by other names.

I do realize I have regular potting soil, I went out and got some grit, like small pebbles and clean sand, witch which I plan to mix it altogether like suggested.

No, pls. read again, they said no sand.

It's not a big deal if you break the roots a bit in the process, strong healthy plants recover from that.

Just crumble off the soil w/ your fingers, which won't hurt the plants as long as they're dry. Soft or mushy roots or bad-smelling are rot, dry, crunchy brittle roots are dead; both should be removed. Just crumble off the soil w/ your fingers, which won't hurt the plants as long as they're dry.

Pot it up dry & wait several days before watering. Slowly incease exposure to stronger sun.

If crumbling the soil off doesn't work (and too many healthy roots are being broken off with it), you could try swishing the root ball (gently) in bowl of tepid water, even leaving it sitting in water for a while - it may soften the hardened peat. Easiest way to re-wet the peat is hot water (obviously, only tepid if there is plant). After washing, let dry out on some newspaper or kitchen towels, since you don't want it to be too wet for too long and too wet to pot.

The only sand I would ever use is horticultural sand - quite gritty.

How large are the pebbles/grit you got? - pretty good size is about same size as most of aquarium gravel.

We all gasp when someone mentions using sand. That's because what one person thinks is gritty is not what we were talking about.

This was sold as potting sand. It's grittier than play sand, but the particle size is still too small.

This is called coarse sand. It does look more like aquarium gravel like Rina mentioned. It has worked well and looks pretty, but it way more expensive than a bag of chicken grit from the farm store.

I have a lot of pictures of potting mix ingredients because I have made most of the mistakes! LOL

"potting Sand" is more useful for propagation of non-succulents

imho anything that falls thru a 3mm sieve stays out of the pot :)

Thank you all of you for the help. I'll be throwing out the sand then, I also thought it was coarse enough.

In my location I am having a really hard time locating such fine gravely coarse sand you've shown in photos above, so preparing a new home for my succulents is taking longer than normal. I am still not entirely sure if they're under or over-watered but I can only hope they survive until I can make the new home.

You had a small clump of orostachys iwarenge in the top photo. I've found that they need much more moisture availability while establishing than most of my other succulents. Looks like yours got very dry since most of the lower leaves were dead. In case you still have them around, I don't see them in later photos, they do bounce back well with proper care.

Also, a few drops of bleaching agent free dish soap (original dawn, Dr. Bronner's, etc) per gallon of water will greatly reduce the surface tension of the water, which will help eliminate hydrophobicity in that peat/ soil mixture. Soap/ detergent is the most common household surfactant. It won't damage the plant.

FWIW, I would use the sand/grit in Crenda's first picture of potting sand. For my climate and watering habits that kind of grit works for me. I'm in a high elevation temperate dessert. When I started growing cacti and succulents I tried using finer local sand in my mix. Even with the silt washed out of it it is still very fine grained compared to the pictures above. The washed fine sand in my mix worked, more or less. However, I started using something grittier like the sand in Crenda's first pic of sand. I think the pH and minerals in the local fine sand caused some problems for me.