Tuesday, September 15, 2015

PPM - Parts Per Million in Planted Tanks - An Idiot's Guide

PPM stands for parts per million, or parts per million parts.
It means 1 ppm is one part of a unit per 1 million part of the same unit.
If you substitute "part" with "gram" then you can say one gram of unit per 1 million gram of the same unit - 1g/Mg
Now you can also translate it into one milligram of unit per 1 thousand gram of the same unit - 1mg/kg

It's the same right?
Are you still with me? I hope so.

In aquarium world we are dealing with volume of water. Fresh water specifically in planted tanks.
We also know that 1L of fresh water is equal to 1Kg of fresh water. Google "Water Density"  if you are confused.
Now we can also replace our formula for PPM with fresh water volume

1mg/Kg = 1mg/L correct?

Therefore we can conclude that 1mg/L = PPM in fresh water planted tanks. Got it?

Now why does it matter in measuring fertilizers in planted tanks? Because using this unit allows us to specify dosage concentration regardless of the size of our tank.

Say Monte Carlo plant need 10mg/L of potassium everyday to thrive. Now if a person has 100L tank, you don't have to tell him how much exactly in grams of potassium he needs to dose. He can calculate it himself. for 100L of tank, need to dose 10mG * 100 which is 1g. if the tank size is 50L, then it's 500mg. At the end of the day, the PPM remains the same - 10mg/L. cute?

I hope this helps.

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