Brazilian Raintree help

[Kelsan23]

I purchased a BRT a little less than a week ago. It didn’t spend more than two days in shipping and seemed to have been packaged very well. It started dropping leaves the next day in protest. I know the trees tend to drop leaves in distress and have been careful with my watering of it but the soil is staying quite wet.

The soil seems to be heavy on the perlite and sand, my question is, should I leave it be and let it recover or should it be put into a better draining soil?

 

[JoeR]

Imo, it was growing happy in the soil before you got it so I dont believe it urgently needs repotted. Perlite is a good soil component, other than it floats. Just make sure its not staying too wet. New growth may take a few weeks

 

[Clicio]

It looks fine to me. Give it some time to recover, in the open shade, water as needed.
Perlite+peat is a good mix.
Later, when it will be thriving, I would cut it down, the apex looks too high for a BRT.

 

[roberthu]

This is what I went through about 3 weeks ago. The tree stayed 5 days in the box during shipping and 99% of the leaves dried and up and dropped in the box when I opened it. Didn’t leaf out until 2 weeks later and I was really worried in the meantime. But everyone on the forum said don’t worry about it. So I kept it in mostly shade and waited. About a week ago it started to push out new leaves and now more buds are expanding.
I would watch out on watering though. Since mine arrived with essentially no leaves, I watered only every other day even though the tree is in a shallow bonsai pot and the temp is over 90F in the day. I check the soil twice a day to make sure it is not dry. Fewer leaves means less water needs. Your soil looks pretty organic from the photos so I’d be careful and not water too much.

 

[Kelsan23]

Thanks for all the replies, they were all very helpful. The tree seems to have stabilized now. I’ve really been watching the watering, only watering every other day as needed.