Darryl

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Environment
All of those plants in the far corner are just barely hanging on for life.  A Pachira aquatica can tolerate a year or two of extremely low light but it will eventually drop most of its leaves – as you are now seeing on your plant.  If you want best possible growth of your houseplants, they need to have the WIDEST possible view of the sky – which means, right in front of your largest window.  An hour or two of direct sun through the window won’t hurt any of these plants but you will need to keep up with watering and fertilizing.

Here’s how much my Money Tree grew after completely cutting it back 6 months ago – notice how it lives right in front of a large window:

Effort
Unfortunately, you are the victim of poor plant care tags: couple of teaspoons of water?  Ice?  I think these methods were created purely so they sound easy but, the thing is, they won’t work if the light is poor!  Once you have moved the plants right in front of your largest window, then the WHEN and HOW to water are simple:

WHEN to water: for Pachira aquatica, check that the soil has reached about halfway dry – that will be your cue to water (it doesn’t make sense to water on a schedule when light and temperature differences will cause different rates of water usage in the soil)

HOW to water: evenly saturate all parts of the soil and allow excess water to drain away.  It’s easiest to do this in a sink although with my larger plant, I just pour the appropriate amount of water since it doesn’t have a drainage hole – there are more advanced watering strategies that I cover in my online course: Essentials of Houseplant Enjoyment

Fertilizing: if you never fertilize, the plant’s ability to make new leaves will come at the cost of lower leaves dying off to give their nitrogen up for the newer growth.  Over time, what you will see is the foliage getting more sparse until the plant is left with just a few leaves at the top while most of the bottom leaves have fallen off.  When you fertilize properly, the plant will hold on to more leaves at a time (which will still be limited since we’re growing houseplants in containers).  More about fertilizers HERE

Expectations
If you don’t like the current shape of your plant, you can cut back each of the stems until there’s about 2 to 3 inches of green stem left.  Yes, your plant will just be a stump for a few weeks but it should re-grow if you provide it good light and water/fertilize accordingly (as mentioned above). Putting houseplants far from any windows is a recipe for disappointment – some die quicker than others but eventually, they will all disappoint you.

SERVICES
• ASK ME about one plant
• 30-Minute Consultation (for lots of plants)