Does E. ancistrophora grow *this* slowly (photos)

Hi Everyone,

I have seeds from *I think* E. ancistrophora.  I was delighted when they sprouted, but they've grown incredibly slowly.

Here, they're about 3 months old.  The Australian coin for scale is about the size of an American dime.




In this picture, they are are a year and a half old... not even sure they're still alive after this last winter, but when they were more obviously alive, they were that size.



So should this cactus be growing more than this in 18 months?

Thanks!

Best way to tell is to re-pot them. If you remove them from the soil and there is no root they are probably dead.

It is possible that you dried them out too early. Normally I keep my seedlings under high humidity/temp for 4-6 months before drying out. If you dry them out to early they will take a very long time to get going.

That's probably what happened - dried out too early. How do you tell when that should happen - just by the elapsed time, or when they're a certain size?

If I did dry them out too early, is it too late to put them back into a high humidity/temp environment?

Thanks @SneakyCuttlefish for that. Good tip.

Normally you can't put them back in. Once a cactus has dried out there are a number of biological processes that kick in that help the cactus to survive drought. These processes make the cactus intolerable to high humidity.

I don't have any method for drying them out. A few weeks is not long enough. Any more than 6 months and algae and other bacteria's tend to get in and cause problems. That's my experience anyway.