PPM conversion - for those who like math!

[vegas2k]

I have been thinking about the whole add ammonia..wait an hour..add ammonia..wait an hour while fishless cycling in the very beginning, and since I kind of screwed up mine in the beginning and overadded...I sat down and decided to do some math.

Let us say, assuming a 50 gallon tank, I want to bring it up to around 5 ppm ammonia without overshooting it by a ton, or undershooting it by a ton. I have with me a 1ml dropper to help me with this.

So...doing some math..I don't want to overshoot it, so I figure ok, use 40 gallons as my volume of water instead of 50.


Now let's do some conversion! :)

Convert 40 gallons to milliliters(1 US gallon = 3 785.41178 ml) :

40gallons = 151416 ml

Now, convert my 1 ml dropper to ppm! MY AMMONIA is a 10% concentration, so I'll say each dropper is .1ml ammonia.

.1ml/151416ml = .00000066043218682305700850636656628097 or .000066043218682305700850636656628097%

*ignoring that it is adding to the overall volume

Then convert Percentage to ppm you take the percent that we just got, and multiply it by 10,000, and I get :

.66043218682305700850636656628097 ppm, or...

.66 ppm.

So each 1ml for me gives me .66 ppm increase in the tank.

5/.66= 7.6 (5 being the ppm goal and .66 being how much each 1ml of my ammonia will raise the ammonia)

So if I add 7.6ml of my 10% ammonia to a 40 gallon tank it'll be around 5 ppm...of course my tank is 50gal, but mine in particular has sand already in it, and it is of course not filled to the top.

Anyhow, to those math types..how does this sound? :)

All I did was :


Convert my amount of water to ml

take my ammonia @ 10% concentration and see what % it would be in 40 gallons

convert that percentage to ppm for 1ml

divide that ppm into 5(the resulting ppm I want for cycling).



Anyone who likes to do conversions and such and would like to nerd out with me, check my math ;)

[jaysee]

Glad I'm not the only math geek...

[William]

That equation had been so much easier using liters :-)
Not that it is hatd now!

[jaysee]

That equation had been so much easier using liters :-)
Not that it is hatd now!

That's why scientists use the metric system - They're lazy :hmm3grin2orange:

[vegas2k]

hehe yeah metric is much easier..o well. google gives me conversions pretty quick though :)

[sid101]

It's not that is easier as much as it actually makes sense

[vegas2k]

yah for me, just 1 extra step to convert from Gal to ml hehe

[vegas2k]

and the reason I used ml was just because my dropper was in ml. but if ya want L..move the decimal over! =p

[terrapin24h]

I use airline. I take a chunk of airline and dunk 1 end of it in ammonia, and then put my thumb over the end. I then dispense dropwise into the tank, 2 drops per gallon. I have(thus far) hit it just about right. If i want to be fancy, i tie a know in the end of the line and use it as a "squeeze ball" to get a real dropper affect.

--chris