Dwarf Powderpuff stopped growing........for a long long time

[AvengingAB]

Hi, I am having a problem with my Dwarf Powderpuff. I've had it for 3 months now. At first when I brought it back home to my little indoor greenhouse table, it grew happily and vigorously, springing new shoots and leaves. Once the flowers finished blooming though, the plant stopped growing and lost ALL of its vigor. From my inspection every day, all the plant seems to be doing is putting out enough effort to just survive.

(pH problem?)

Plant Description: The leaves are green with a (very) slight yellow tinge to them, but still seem healthy, maybe a little dry and a little leathery (I'm guessing it likes more humidity), but smooth and normal shaped. Branches have green to them, even on branches without leaves. NEW leaves grew to a very small size (bunches of 5-6 leaves together, which is normal), staying at about 3/16" or 3-4mm long, no larger. No flowers since the last ones that bloomed and fell off either. Plant seems dormant. Fullsized leaves are 1" in length, but those are OLD. Now it's just slowly dropping leaves that are getting too old. All new growth (which is also fairly old, 4-5 weeks?) STAYS the aforementioned 3/16" size - and there isn't much of that either.

Environment: Indoors, but it is getting a lot of light on my bonsai table (5 full racks of 20W fluorescent lights supplemented with 12 (100-150W incandescent equivalent) coil fluorescent bulbs serving a small 2' x 4' table). Ultrasonic humidifier feeds misted fog through clear tube into the area, but relative humidity is still 40-50% at 85-92 degrees F. Fan directs the hot air from out under the lights. Powderpuff gets 14.5 hours of light, as do all my other bonsai trees - and my other bonsai trees are growing and the ones that flower are flowering.

Watering/Fertilization: It is in a fairly large pot for the amount of leaves it has (not many....you can count them (20?) but they are green). I just water them just like the others, when the top 1" of the soil is dry. I don't know if anyone is familiar with it, but I use Dyna-gro liquid concentrate for fertilizer. I follow the dilution instructions for noncirculating hydroponics, which I use as water (I fertilize every time I water unless the tree is sick or doing very poorly) for my other plants seem to be happy with (many serissas, a boxwood, a natal plum, costa rican mint, neea buxifolia, and bougavillea galbra). That drops the pH of my water down to around 5.5-5.8.

Soil: Mostly inorganic coarse mix of shale, volcanic rock, and some bark.

******DOES ANYONE KNOW for certain if Powderpuffs hate ACIDIC SOIL? ! Well, if they do that would certainly make it frown and freeze..********

Bugs/Pests: None in the soil that I can see, leaves and bark are clean.

Can't figure out what's wrong with the tree!! But it must be one of several things, and I think the most likely suspect would be the pH, humidity, maybe the soil medium... I don't understand what it's doing, so if any of yall have suggestions or guesses, I'd be happy to hear!

Thanks,

Matt

[ynot]

I don't have one but everything I am reading indicates they like somewhat sandy and slightly alkaline bonsai soil.
It is noted they will not tolerate salt.

I don't know what lumens your lighting is throwing at them [I presume plenty, BTW- Watts are a measure of the energy used not the light pruduced]
[To be clear- You do not have incandescent lights right?-They produce alot of heat.]
What are the NPK of the ferts you use? I would suspect that your ferts are excessive. I completely understand that your soil drains well- But I think the constant relentless feeding is bound to cause some build up of chemicals in your soil [an Idea].

I think I would back off the ferts. The feeding schedule was most likely the biggest single change since you brought it home true? Try just letting it ride for a while as bonsai almost never die due to underfeeding.
Otherwise, Not sure
good luck
TIM