Gallons vs Litres

[Guggle]

I see a lot of people here refer to gallons as their tank size, but what type of gallon is being referred to?

Is it US Liquid Gallons which equals 3.7 litres or Imperial Gallons which equals 4.5 litres?

Cheers,

 

[Essjay]

In fishkeeping, it's always US gallons. The only thing I've ever found which uses Imperial gallons is the King British range of products, which is a UK manufacturer. Everything else I've seen uses US gallons.

 

[TNG]

I see a lot of people here refer to gallons as their tank size, but what type of gallon is being referred to?

Is it US Liquid Gallons which equals 3.7 litres or Imperial Gallons which equals 4.5 litres?

Cheers,

Just wondering if any of your tanks suffered any damage during the minor earthquake Thursday morning? Did they lose any “gallons” of water or you didn’t even feel it?

I’m currently interstate, so will find out when I return home next week .

 

[OnlyGenusCaps]

it's always US gallons

It is. Sorry world! We Americans, as a group, are just not smart enough to be able to handle switching over to metric.
Some of us hold out hope to change this map:

We even tried in the 1970's, but failed. Still...

 

[Essjay]

I'm old enough to have been through school using inches, feet and yards; miles; and stones, pounds and ounce etc. We were even taught really archaic things like rods and perches for distance, gills for liquid measurement, pecks for weight, pounds, shillings and pence for money etc. So I find it easy to think in both Imperial and metric.

 

[Byron]

Canada used imperial and I learned it at school (1950's-1960's) but we changed to metric in the late 1970's-early 1980's. I still do not know metric distances like I do imperial. If someone says "x" is five km away I've no idea how far that actually is, but if they say 5 miles I know the distance. If a plant in the garden grows 45 cm, I have to mentally convert this to inches (= roughly 30 inches) before I have any clue as to how tall it will grow. Same for temperature...I know what 70 F feels like, but I have to "convert" 23 C to F.

 

[Essjay]

If a plant in the garden grows 45 cm, I have to mentally convert this to inches (= roughly 30 inches)

Errr.... 45 cm is 18 inches
There are certain conversions I know without needing to think about it. My main tank was built in Imperial, and it's 18 inches tall and deep, which is 45 cm. 42 inches = 107 cm, the length of my tank. My shrimp tank is a 30 cm cube = 12 inches. A 60 cm tank = 24 inches.

 

[Byron]

Errr.... 45 cm is 18 inches
There are certain conversions I know without needing to think about it. My main tank was built in Imperial, and it's 18 inches tall and deep, which is 45 cm. 42 inches = 107 cm, the length of my tank. My shrimp tank is a 30 cm cube = 12 inches. A 60 cm tank = 24 inches.

There you are, clear evidence I don't know metric very well, lol.

 

[Ichthys]

In fishkeeping, it's always US gallons. The only thing I've ever found which uses Imperial gallons is the King British range of products, which is a UK manufacturer. Everything else I've seen uses US gallons.

Hmmm, that hasn’t been my experience at all. On all the British-based forums it tends to be imperial. Also British people tend to use imperial on any forum. Waterlife Research (and probably all British manufacturers past and present) use imperial.

Conversion of length is simple. 30cms is a foot. What could be easier?
The only thing I ever have to work out is the conversion between those silly US gallons and proper gallons. The rest is easy.

Oh and C to F and vice versa. It’s easy to do approximately, but to convert exactly I find a city on my weather app that’s the same temperature and click the C/F button.

 

[Guggle]

Just wondering if any of your tanks suffered any damage during the minor earthquake Thursday morning? Did they lose any “gallons” of water or you didn’t even feel it?

I’m currently interstate, so will find out when I return home next week .

Didn't even know there was a quake until later that day. Tank suffered no damage.

 

[Essjay]

Waterlife Research (and probably all British manufacturers past and present) use imperial.

I had not realised Waterlife uses Imperial, though I have to confess I've rarely needed their products and they don't give dose rates on-line, or on the leaflets that used to come in every box (I still have an old leaflet). I always use litres for working out dose rates so there's no error in dosage, but quite a long time ago now there was a question on a forum about King British so I made a point of checking that brand.

 

[Ichthys]

I had not realised Waterlife uses Imperial, though I have to confess I've rarely needed their products and they don't give dose rates on-line, or on the leaflets that used to come in every box (I still have an old leaflet).

The dosages are on the bottles.

 

[Essjay]

This raises a good point. I have looked on eSHa's website and their instruction leaflets say 'a 100 litres/22 gallon tank needs this amount of treatment', so they use Imperial gallons and they are based in the Netherlands not the UK.

It is safer to use litres to work out dosages, except if you are using American products in the USA