Fish Pond Solar Panel
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The placement of this pond is on the North side of my house, and it is in the shade all day in the winter. Since it is completely above ground, it doesn't benefit from any geo thermal heat or earth / dirt insulation.

The temperature in the pond water was hovering around 44 degrees farenheit. The fish I have can survive in water that cold, but they won't be moving around very much, sort of in a hibernating state. I thought about making a solar panel, and since I live in Arizona, there is PLENTY of sunshine to heat it.

I can get 500' of black poly pipe for around $30 at Home Depot, but before I do that, I wanted to put together something of materials I already owned as an experiment. I just happened to have a black garden hose and enough fittings to covert it to 1/2" pipe, plus a spare 145 gph pump rated at 47" lift.

A typical solar panel with poly pipe looks like a pizza box, where the lid is clear plastic. It works by absorbing the solar radiation, and the box makes it more effecient, but not allowing the air to cool the pipes as easily & to retain / capture more heat. But for my test purpose, just coiling it up and using a couple of sticks of wood, screwed together will give me some indicator.

On the first day I used it, the water temperature started at 52 degrees, and by the days's end, it was at 60 degrees !! Wow, that was a pretty good gain !!

Here is a more recent look at my pond and what it is collecting. The Chia Pets that came at Christmas and were living in the kitchen, have moved out to be with the fishes. Also a pot that came with the house, decided it wanted to live in the pond. We propped it up on a half cinder block, and now the fish stay in the cinder block all day long.

The plants are the extra plastic ones we weren't using in the inside aquarium. The water looks a bit dirty, I didn't clean the lava rocks enough before putting the fish in.