The Tank Capacity Myth

[LakeyGal]

I may be repeating an old thread that I've missed here but I just started wondering how much water my fish actually have in their tanks I found the formula for working out litre capacity from cubic cm as length x depth x height / 1000 = the total litre capacity. (Any maths whizz out there please feel free to correct me)

I applied that to the water holding part of my Rio 180 (Discounting gravel) and found there is only 140 litres of water, take off 10litres for the water displaced by bogwood & decor etc and my fish only have 130litres so I have now realised I am overstocked I knew there wouldn't actually be 180litres in the tank but I wasn't expecting to lose 50litres just by doing sums...

I'm sort of hoping I got it wrong

 

[OohFeeshy]

Capacity is more of a representative thing as opposed to truly accurate. Although a 100 gallon tank might actually be only 86, whatever, gallons in actual water, it's near enough, and since everyone uses the outside dimensions it doesn't really matter.