What Size Your Aquarium Really Is (Despite What the Tank Says)

When you purchase a fish tank you think your fish tank will be as big as they tell you that it is. Then something odd happens. You have a 10 gallon tank and you pour about 5 gallon of water into the tank and it's full. Wait a minute, I thought that the tank was a 10 gallon tank? The real size that they tell you your tank is, is not really the correct size. To calculate the size of your aquarium you will to use a specific formula. You will need to calculate how big your fish take really is in order to calculate how many fish you can keep in your fish tank.

This is actually not good to think that your tank is as big as they tell you that it is. Say for example that you need to treat your fish tank and you think it's a 55 gallon fish tank. You will purchase medication for the fish tank as if it were a 55 gallon tank. When in reality, your fish tank is really less than 40 gallons you can possibly kill your fish because you're placing too much medication into your water. If you know the correct size of your aquarium than you can treat the tank with it's real and appropriate size. If you don't calculate out the size of the aquarium, you will never really know.

To do the calculation you will need to grab a tape measure. Simply guessing the tanks size or looking it up on-line will not suffice. This is because some tanks that are certain size will comes in two different sizes. You will then need to measure out the length x width x height. You can basically assume that when you purchase a 55 gallon tank there's a maximum capacity of 55 gallons. This means that without rock, decorations and the tank overflowing you will have a 55 gallon tank. The second you add gravel to your tank you will be down to about 48 gallons.

If you are purchasing a tank and it says that the tank is 40 gallons, you can assume that the maximum capacity is 40 gallons. By the time you add rock and decorations to the fish tank you will probably have somewhere around 30 gallons instead of 40 gallons. You will always need to subtract at least 5 pounds for the rock and 5 pounds for decorations. Take into account that you never fill your tank all the way full to the point where you could walk next to the tank and spill the water onto the floor. You never have as much tank as they say you will have. This is because the tank is never full and the rock takes up a lot more space than you think that it does.