G'day guys... recently I've found myself growing more and more opuntiads, and of late I've taken a fancy to Tephrocactus and other similar dwarf opuntiads. It seems many opuntiads are pretty easy to grow, but if there's anyone out there who has some experience with these particular plants I'd love to hear from you. Any advice is welcome, whether it's soil composition or watering and feeding tips.

Hi Lach, I can only give you an amateurs POV. I have recently acquired some of the Tephro with the paper spine in a bulk lot on eBay, which were pretty dried out. I have just potted them up with the Collectors Corner soil and used their slow release fertiliser (I also give all of them a weak Seasol solution every once in a while) which is pretty much what I always do. They don't seem to be overly fussy, and are growing nicely.
I got some little opuntias and a larger crested one, used the same potting mix etc, and they were growing really well, but the small opuntias seem vulnerable to caterpillar attacks, mine were just munched on, all the new offsets, which was horrible I haven't delved into any pesticide research yet, just moved them away from the vegie patch.
Those were speeding along too though, they'd put out a lot of new offshoots

Ahh, cheers for that.

Hope it was somewhat helpful...

Definitely. From what you've said, tephros seem generally hardy, which can only be a good thing. How fast do they grow? I'm used to larger Opuntias, which seem to grow like well-armed weeds... I'm guessing tephros are rather slow in comparison.

If you have a look here Cactus Pro Free Books there's a free downloadable copy of Kiessling's out of print 2000 book on Tephrocactus. Well worth the download, as are some of the others on the page.

Hope it helps !

That's just the sort of thing I'm looking for! Cheers mate!

Just to add, yeah, they are fairly slow growing

Thanks for the link, lots of cacti books there!!!!!! thanks