New Homeowner With Dying Bamboo!

[YoloBambooMama]

Help me!

We moved into our new home in Northern CA a few months ago and there was a privacy screen bamboo "fence" in a planter box in front of our front window.

However, it does not seem to be doing well and I have ZERO experience with bamboo, however find it to be intriguing and really want to care for it properly.

From what I can tell we definitely have two types of bamboo, one of them being a black bamboo (which is doing the worst surviving).

One side of the planter has very bushy bamboo in thick clumps with thick yellow stalks and green leaves, the other side of the planter with mostly black bamboo is very sparce and I found a lot of dead stalks and new shoots which are skinny and just dying off.

Any ideas? By the black bamboo, under the fallen dead leaves, I see some white spidery web looking things along with black spots - don't know if this is related?

Any help is MUCH appreciated as I would hate to see these lovely plants die.

[Tarzanus]

How large is the planter? Is it exposed to scorching full afternoon sun? I don't have experience with Phyllostachys nigra, but I've read that it doesn't like heat and scorching sun, especially when planted in a container or planter with limited space and resources.

[needmore]

Black bamboo starts out green then gradually turns black over the course of a year or more so you'll always have some green culms, some black ones and some in between. From your photos I don't see anything that looks particularly ill, it is possible that those brown'sih culms are in between green & black or they could indeed be ill but hard to tell from the photos. The black bamboo I generally see in the valley looks somewhat unhappy to me BTW.

[YoloBambooMama]

Thank you everyone for your responses. Also has anyone been successful with transplanting? If I took some of the busy, thriving bamboo and tried to use it to fill in the empty bare spots?

On another note, should I be pruning the bottom branches or just leave the bamboo to it's own growth pattern?

[Cooper12]

im betting its getting pot bound in the planter and nigra seems to like shade in the valley .
id divide it