help with math?!

[Nichelle Hubley]

I'm new to this but very excited! I'm planning my indoor system but I've hit a road block with my calculations. I have a 55 gallon tank. If the grow bed is a foot deep, what surface area does that leave me to work with?

It seems like it should be simple math. I'm going to chalk it up to the mysteries of the imperial system. 

Could anyone help me out?

[Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair]

A good rule of thumb is you should have the same volume in your media grow bed as your fish tank. There are 7.5 gallons in a cubic foot so 55/7.5 = 7.3 square ft. Round it up more is better than less.

[Nichelle Hubley]

Thanks man, you saved me!

[Alex Veidel]

For future conversion problems, you can type, say "55 gallons to cu. ft" into the Google search engine. They have a calculator that will pull up the answer at the top of your results.