Beginner Gardening: Saving an overwatered dracaena, 1 by x50

x50 wrote:
I have a plant, purchased a few weeks ago. I'm a complete beginner and have already screwed up pretty badly.

I'm fairly certain that the plant is a Dracaena Marginata (the big box store only labeled it as "tropical foliage". It has no color on any leaves.

edit: I believe I misidentified the plant. A Dracaena Marginata seemed like a close (but not perfect) match but the leaves seemed slightly different (and always remained just green). I think this may be a Dracaena Anita. Hard to find much info on the Anita but it seems like a closer match and it is grown by a vendor that supplies the big box store.

I have it planted in a clay pot (glazed on outside, unglazed on inside). I don't recall the exact size but the container it was purchased in fit snugly inside of it and the roots were not bound in the original container. It gets filtered sunlight from a south facing window several feet away (lack of light could be an issue but it seems appropriate for the care of this plant from my research).

The tips of the leaves were turning brown and over the last few days the issue is growing worse. I believe it can take a few weeks to for this plant to show signs/symptoms of poor conditions. I'm quite sure I've overwatered this plant. There are rock pebbles at the top (for stability, decor and to keep the soil in place during watering). I have no problem removing them. I began watering without a meter and the pebbles made it hard to determine how moist the soil was. I am now using a water meter. It is generally reading between a 7.4 and a 8.5 (water meter is on a scale from 0 to 10) in most areas, which I believe is too much moisture for this plant. The pot has a drainage hole in the bottom center but it seems to retain a lot of moisture still. I have no been fertilizing (yet) as this was planted within the last few weeks using MiracleGro potting mix (the mix, not the soil, which I believe is mostly peat moss and some perlite).

The potting mix is still very wet (the 7-8 readings are very recent and I have not watered it recently, so it was likely even worse several days ago). My question is, how bad do you think this plant is and what is the best course of action?

I'm concerned about shock if I repot but I'm more concerned the plant will die before the potting mix dries. Should I repot it now or wait this out? If I repot, I would like to add a much greater mix of perlite or switch potting mixtures as I'm disappointed with the drainage from this mix in this pot. The leaves have gone from brown tips to browning on the majority of some leaves and it seems to be worsening by the day. Is there much risk to unpotting it to try and determine the health of the roots?

Any advice on saving this plant would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

edit: When I water (which I've done twice and now realize that was too frequent) I used rain water once and tap water once. The tap water was filtered through a Brita water filter and sat for 24-48 hours before used for the plant. I'm not sure if the Brita filter removes (enough) fluoride from the tap water but I think this is a symptom from overwatering and not just fluoride in the water.

This message was edited Jul 8, 2016 2:28 PM

This message was edited Aug 1, 2016 2:42 PM