My 72gal bowfront is only 62gal! where did the 10gal go??!!

Oh, I see......I thought Ray had got the bowfront off of Craigslist (CL). Ray, you said there was no labels or manufacturer's information right?
 
We hope that some day in the future Americans and British will try a new thing called A Liter...

We tried that about 30 yrs ago. Then gave up I guess? Probably because someone didn't give someone in the gov enough money to keep it going. Thats how things get done over here, in case you didn't know. ;)

Now we have to buy two sets of tools to work on anything, and guess which bolt might be what. Fun, fun!
 
but my milk containers are true 1gal jugs

Are you truly sure about this? I ask because I did an experiment just like yours. Like you I thought 'Hey the jugs I get my distilled water in will be perfect' but I decided to measure them first. I actually found that they were just a little less then a gallon (which ticks me off that I have been buying 'gallons' of water all this time but not been getting a full gallon). This of course would actually make your situation even worse though. But not unexpected, for me at least. I know that the measurement is suppose to be a hypothetical number with the water filled even with the top, but my last two tanks haven't been anywhere close. My 38 gallon fell short by almost 10 gallons. :headshake2:

Of course I should say that there is always a chance that I totally screwed something, but look at my tank level after a 10 gallon water change and tell me what you think.
 
Thinking about this . . .

48" x 18" for the base. If you have 2 inches of gravel or sand on the bottom, if we pretend that is equivalent to water, the guesstimate would be:

48 x 18 x 2 = 1728

1728 / 231 = 7.48

It's not exact, but 2 inches of substrate would take away the space to hold about 7+ gallons of water. If you've got a little more substrate than that in the tank, a heater, some decorations, some plants, etc . . . at 10 gallons of displaced water pretty quickly.
 
What fish do you have in there and how much decor? It is probably just because your fish/decor are displacing 10 gallons of water.
 
When you did these measurements, was the tank completely empty, no substrate or decorations?

of course! it was a new set up for cycling.
 
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