Getting Thai Cons while being as bad with plants as I am was such a huge mistake haha

The first one I got in late September - it was a young but well established plant with 3 leaves - one of them already decently fenestrated! I kept it in my very dark living room with a rather sad little grow light and it started rotting basically right away.

In desperation, I tried moving it to LECA and a much brighter spot, which seemingly did more damage as I had been a bit rough on the roots as I was cleaning the soil and rotten stuff off. By December, all roots had died off and the rot was starting to get to the stem :(

I was really worried about the stem getting affected, so I made the executive decision to split up the plant about a month ago. The smallest leaf had already died off earlier, so one leaf was left with the questionable stem while the top-cutting (that had been struggling to push a new leaf since November!!) got exactly one root node. All the root nodes left on the stem cutting had already grown and rotted away, so I wasn't sure whether that one could be saved.

I think it was the right call though! The top cutting is growing amazing new roots with no rot in sight (see header picture), while the stem cutting is unexpectedly pushing out some small new root buds!!

My second Thai Con - which I got in November and put into LECA at the same time as the other one - HAD been looking good until recently, but I'm guessing I was a bit too enthusiastic when building that self-watering pole and now it looks like overwatering is getting to it.

Or at least I'm hoping that the yellow leaves and the weird brown stuff on the back of the leaves is just overwatering and not some larger issue ;_;