Calculating tank size?

[Jim Sinclair]

I'm not a newbie, but I've just had to pull out the first tank that was given to me 5 years ago to house my fish, which had been rescued from a trash can after the end of the State Fair. The survivors of that rescue are now living an indoor pond in my basement, and a few months ago presented me with almost 300 unexpected baby fish. One of the plastic tubs I have babies in seems to have a slow leak, so I have dragged out my very first aquarium to move that batch of babies into.

So I have this used aquarium that measures about 2 feet long, one foot wide, and one foot high. The person who gave it to me back in 2013 said it was a 20 gallon tank, but aquariumdimensions.com shows these measurements for a 15 gallon tank.

Is 15 gallons even a standard tank size? Which figure should I use for calculating how much water conditioner, salt, etc. should go in this tank?

 

[Colin_T]

To work out the volume of water in the tank:
measure length x width x height in cm.
divide by 1000.
= volume in litres.

When you measure the height, measure from the top of the substrate to the top of the water level.

There is a calculator/ converter in the "How To Tips" at the top of this page that will let you convert litres to gallons if you need it.

 

[Jim Sinclair]

Thanks, I will try to remember to bookmark that when I'm on my laptop.

Fortunately it seems the plastic tub is not leaking after all. The leakage was coming from water splashing out of the back of the filter, which was not level. I have stabilized the filter and marked the water level with a piece of tape. If the water level stays the same now that the filter is stable, that means those fish can stay in the tub. Then if I can scrounge another filter, and find another available outlet to plug it into, I can take some more fish out of the overcrowded big tank and put them in this old one, and maybe stave off disaster for a couple more weeks....