Soil too wet?

[mariabruce4]

Im building my first tank from scratch and have seem to run into some trouble. My soil soaks up the water from the drainage layer and is stays soaked leaving my drainage layer without water.

I have about 2 inches of LECA in the bottom.
Then I put a felt mat to keep the dirt away from the drainage layer. (I purchased it from PETCO)
At first I put just the soil, but now in order to keep it dry I put a layer of sand and then added the soil as the top and final layer.

I left the tank for 24 hours and checked on it and the soil is still wet (not as wet though) and the drainage layer water went down.

I did not use ABG. is that the reason?

Please offer me any kind of advice you have. I want to finish the tank and get my frogs!!

Thank you!!

[J Teezy]

your viv is doing what is set to do. That's what LECA does, it wicks water back into the substrate, some people like this some don't. I personally don't like how LECA wicks water back so I use eggcrate false bottoms. Your soil doesn't matter, no matter what soil you use, if you are using leca as a drainage layer it's going to wick water back to the soil. If you don't want your soil as wet as it is, i suggest you tear out the leca and put in an eggcrate fb

[AReaHerps]

Thx for that! I was wondering why some people would use one or the other or even both. So at this point my plan is LECA, eggcrate, filter, then soil. Is this correct?

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[J Teezy]

when you use eggcrate there's no reason for LECA, Eggcrate is your Leca is a sense. You support the eggcrate off the bottom of the viv however high you want it. Cover it in windowscreen, put soil on, sphagnum, leaf litter and good to go

[AReaHerps]

Is there any other way around it? I already purchased LECA and I feel it would be a waste to not use it.

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[J Teezy]

it's really pointless to use eggcrate and LECA. The purpose of the eggcrate is too create a fake floor. The water goes through your soil through the eggcrate and rests in the bottom of the tank where it doesn't contact the anything really, which rids the wicking issue you have with LECA. Then you remove the water once it gets too high by siphoning it out (i drill holes in the bottom of my tanks with bulkheads so that the water just runs out into a 5 gallon bucket).

I'm afraid if you want to keep the LECA then there's really no point in using eggcrate. It just really makes no sense to me to use LECA with an eggcrate FB because well you don't anything under the eggcrate so you would be putting LECA ontop of it, which would be pointless because like i said eggcrate is meant to keep anything from contacting the water table under the soil and LECA is meant to be used to actually be in some level of water as its the lowest level in your setup when making your floor layer for a viv. If you use an eggcrate FB raised say 2" off the bottom of the tank, it will actually hold more water in that 2" space than 2" of LECA would because the LECA is taking up volume that water could be in (if you know what i'm saying). It's like if you had a 12 ounce glass, then a 12 ounce can of soda would fit in it. If you took that same glass and put in some ice cubes, you wouldn't be able to fit the whole soda in there. So having a eggcrate FB will actually allow you to go longer than you would with LECA for removing access water.

Basically pick one LECA or Eggcrate don't use them together it just doesn't make sense.

[AReaHerps]

Totally get what you're saying. Thx for the reply. I think I would prefer to use eggcrate at this point. I would rather have more water underneath mainly because I'm creating a water feature.

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