CactiGuide.com

Hello!

I recently bought a monkey tail cactus and now I'm constantly worried about it so forgive me if this question is a bit dumb

Soon after I brought the plant home, pests (thrips) appeared. I got rid of them with NeemAzal, which people at our botanical garden suggested. (At least I hope I did, as I haven't seen any of the little bastards on the cactus for several weeks now). After the 4th round of treatment I noticed some of the stems starting to rot, due to excess watering, which I had to do since the pesticide had to be given with water. I dug up the plant, removed the rotting stems, broke the cactus into 4 pieces and replanted them.

Now the actual question. On the photo that I attached, does the cactus look okay or normal to you? Specifically the way the ends of the stems are so thin and curling upwards. Or should I be worried that it doesn't like something or needs something, etc?

Where in your house are you keeping the cactus? The ends look severely "etiolated," which is abnormal growth caused by lack of light. I'd move it to a spot that gets *a lot* more sun.

Edit:
Another thing I noticed is that the cactus seems to be growing in pure potting soil. I'm not surprised that you had rot--it's lucky you didn't lose the whole plant!

Usually most cacti will do a lot better in a growing medium that's only 25% organic material (soil). Some specific species prefer more or less, some growing conditions will make more or less optional, but in my experience 25% is a good middle ground that will work in a variety of species and growing conditions.

The other 75% of the growing medium should be inorganic. Common choices are pumice, perlite, Turface MVP, vermiculite, gravel. There are a million threads on the forum taking about making cactus soil. Basically when you water the cactus the water should drain out the bottom of the pot in about 30 seconds or so, and the growing medium should dry out completely in under a week.

Agreed, needs much stronger light.

A link to an article here on CactiGuide about common pests and other issues. He's the segment on etiolation.

https://www.cactiguide.com/cactipests/#etiolate