Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Idea for saving Tilapia

I have two lakes stocked with Tilapia in west central alabama. They usually die around the first week in January. The 25 acre lake has no electricity and the 6 acre does. Would like to get some opinions out their on setting up a solor panel to heat water and circulate into pond. 1. Would the tilapia find the warm water and would it be enough to survive? 2. How would I circulate water with no electricity?

Hi Wayne, You would have to have quite a few panels to heat much water especially with the low sun angle and amount of daylight in Alabama during the winter months. As far as circulation you could use solar cell panel to run a 12 volt pump like a live well pump for a boat. I have used them in emergency situations in my Koi pond. Looking at it in reverse, I feed several thousand gallons of water from a well at 59 degrees into my 1/3 of an acre pond and do not notice much of any difference in the water temp where it is fed in and the rest of the pond. I think you would find the same in reverse. So all in all I think you we be into several thousand dollars and probably still lose the fish! Just my opinion. Bob in Hartselle, Alabama

This is probably impractical to heat a pond but when I solar crazy years ago I remember seeing a system for heating a swimming pool that was pretty cheap. Off the top of my head this is what they did. Using telephone poles place in the ground in a row, they built a slant of say 45 degrees from the top of the poles to the ground. They took corrugated aluminum panels and nailed them on the slant like a big roof but with the corrugations running across horizontally. They painted it black. They run a pipe across the top with small holes drilled in it and pumped the pool water in the pipe which then dropped the water all across the top of the panels which run down collecting the heat and back into the swimming pool. Now you could make this more efficient by putting insulation board under the aluminum panels and going one more step farther you could put plastic across the top to keep wind chill down. You would want to angle your panel at a right angle to the sun in the coldest part of the winter and also have it facing south. Just a thought.

John

When I lived in Denver, my boss was using solar collectors to heat water for something. He made a trough from wood and lined it with aluminum foil. He ran a water pipe through it and painted it black. Than he covered the whole thing up with glass that had reflective film on the inside of the trough. He still needed electricity from small solar panel to run the pump, but the device was so efficient that the glass cracked from the heat. This was in January with snow outside. Not sure about what you could do at night.