Hello,
I would like to suggest some new behavior for the Stalactite Block, whether it is the casual one or the Life Crystal one. There will be three categories:

FIRST POINT:
The main issue currently is that Stalactite Blocks behave weirdly when we break anything but the tip of it. For instance, if I had in front of me a 3 blocks tall stalactite, and I break the base of it, it will "float" in the air. I can understand that for the ones that connect ceiling and floor together at once, but otherwise it looks odd.
Here's an example below:

The first one on the left is your casual stalactite down the underground. If you break the bottom, it rearranges itself. This is perfectly fine. The last one on the right is what happen when you break any connections to either ceiling or ground. This looks weird.

So, my suggestion for this is as followed:
Whenever a Stalactite is disconnected to either the floor or the ceiling, it will break entirely and drop stone.
BUT:
If the Stalactite is placed by a player, this rule no longer applies. That way we let the player build whatever they wish with a lot of flexibility.

If you have any reasons not to change the current behavior of the floating stalactite, let me know, because I am curious as to why.
As I said, this is just a suggestion, and I would be okay if it is refused.

SECOND POINT:
This one would teach players to be more cautious when dropping in a hole during expeditions underground. It would also make more sense and be a cool feature player could avoid/use it for:
Whenever an entity fall on a Stalactite (the pointy tip that emerge from the ground), it will take additional damage depending on the height they fell from. (Maybe it would also depend on how tall the stalactite is, since taller ones looks more pointy)
It's quite similar to the Dripstones in Vanilla Minecraft 1.17+, actually.

LAST POINT:
A more aesthetic approach, but maybe the ones from the ceiling could sometimes drip drops of water? That would explain the Stagnant water pool, and overall why there is water underground and how they got formed.

That is all the suggestions I had. Thank you for your reading, and have a nice day! ^^