Outdoor Pond heating solution? ( 5700 Gallons )

[DayumDanny]

I live in connecticut and the winters here are killer when it comes to outdoor ponds/pools. The pond that we built is a giant rectangle, the dimensions in feet are 17Lx9Wx5D. It's huge almost like a medium size swimming pool. We use cinderblocks to construct the walls and poured concrete into the blocks as we built the wall. We put over a giant piece of pond liner to keep the water in. The pond was intended for very expensive koi. Weve had this pond for about 4 years now and our koi fish have adapted to hybrinating in the wintertime and they usually survive through the winter. I have no idea what happened this year. My entire stock died. Heres the body count, still more to be fished out

As you can see these fish are all high quality and all larger than 18" it is a huge lost. Still hurts to look at the pictures. But i came up with another idea, I have a 125 gal, 180 gal, and a couple 500 indoor pools that i am currently raising, black arowanas, silver arowanas, arapaima, african tiger fish, and a couple stingrays. My question is would it be possible to heat my entire pond around 80-82F degrees in the summer time? I'm not sure what to look when it comes to giant pond heaters. This would only be for the early spring and summer, as soon as the tempuratures start dropping im bringing these guys back inside.

I did the math and 17x9x5 = 765 sq ft which is about 5722 gallons. So if you guys can help me with some ideas on how to heat my pond that would be great. if not, im not sure what to do next year, gonna have a huge bare pond.

And heres the picture if anyone was interested:

This is the only picture i could find, ill try and look for more of last summer.

 

[rbarn]

Well you did have a particularly brutal winter up there.

You can buy 3,000 - 18,000 watt heaters.
http://www.aquaticeco.com/subcategories/3926/Aqua-Logic-In-Line-Heaters

 

[RBE17]

You could purchase a coal stove and use it to heat your pond. People do this to heat their pools.


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[DayumDanny]

Well you did have a particularly brutal winter up there.

You can buy 3,000 - 18,000 watt heaters.
http://www.aquaticeco.com/subcategories/3926/Aqua-Logic-In-Line-Heaters

This looks like exactly what i need, do you know how many watts would be sufficient for my pond?

 

[aldiaz33]

There a calculator on this site that might help: http://www.heatingyourpond.com/submersible-heaters.html

The rule of thumb I have heard is that you need 1,000W (1KW) for every 10F rise per 1,000 gallons of water. So even if all you needed was a 10F rise from the low ambient air temp, you would need a 6KW+ heater. If a 6KW heater were to cycle "on" for only 4 hours per day and you pay the national average of $.11 per KWhr, it's going to cost you $80 per month to heat it. I think this may be a very low estimate...I would guess it would run closer to 6 hours per day which would put you closer to $120 per month and potentially even more.

Using that much juice can get expensive, so do the math before you take the plunge.

Natural Gas or running a heat exchanger off of a boiler may be a cheaper alternative worth looking into, although it's typically more involved and the initial setup is much more expensive.

Sorry for your loss...those were some nice looking koi.

 

[rbarn]

This looks like exactly what i need, do you know how many watts would be sufficient for my pond?

It depends on how much you want to heat the pond and how cold it is. To keep the pond at say 60* on a 40* day you are going to need about 10kw heater.

I think a 10-12kw heater should work nicely. You might consider making an insulated cover for the pond that you can lay over the top when its going to be bitter cold out. With a cover you could probably get by with a 5-8kw heater. Although you really needed to have laid down some foundation insulation on the outside of your pond to maximize the benefit of trying to heat it.

 

[stingray keeper]

Cobalt Aquatics/Pond has a very nice pond deicer that is very efficient. Low wattage but very efficient. you could maybe put several of these.

 

[vamptrev]

Didnt you leave an air pump going?


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[joe jaskot]

Any idea of the water temperature of your pond in the summer? Once that volume of water heats up it doesn't cool off fast. Most people try to keep their ponds cool in the summer. LOL! Do your fish really need 80-82 degree water. I've kept many different species of fish outside in ponds and tubs from June to October with no heaters whatsoever. Most fish will adapt to lower outdoor temps.

 

[DayumDanny]

It was just an idea of moving my arowanas, arapaima, and a couole other fish that i have to the outdoor pond in the summer. Maybe 80F is too high but thats the temp i keep my arowanas in