Would love some help.... Am in the midst of setting up a 10 Gallon tank
which is going to be planted/low-maintenance acquarium. Plan for
substrate was as follows 1in kitty litter (walmart special kitty)
terraced up to 1.5 inches towards the rear of the tank. Litter would
have a little bit of Jobe's for fertilizer. Then a uniform 2 in layer
play sand on top of that.

After reading up a lot i decided not to rinse the litter first and put
it straight in. Levelled it at approximately 1in. Scattered small
pieces of Jobe's spikes very deep - i.e. at the bottom of the
substrate. Propbably was about 1.5 spikes total cut into small bits.
Then I gradually added water..... Plan was to let it absorb the water
and settle a bit.... then later I would add a little more towards the
rear of the tank to "terrace".... so that there would never be less
than 1 in litter. After that was planning to add the sand layer after
this bottom one was stable and had dried a bit (e.g. tomorrow
sometime).

WELL added the water and Suprise - the litter more than doubled in
capacity..... it's now about 2.5in and I was planning to have 3-3.5in
total substrate after the sand layer. The water is pretty much absorbed
except for a few pools on the surface. Is the kitty litter layer going
to recede or did i just make an awful mistake and need to remove at
least half of it before it dries? Should I really have only places
0.3/0.5in dry litter to start?

I really thought that I had researched this to exhaustion before
starting, but apparently not enough.

Opinions welcome and needed!

Thanks!