solar direct pump for fish ponds

System

I have 2 old Arco 16-2000 single crystal panels (35W) which I would like to use to circulate the water in my cattle watering tank that I use as a fish pond. It would be best if the pump would work directly from the panels with no battery backup. Eventually I will have 3 of these tanks in series, total of about 800-900 gallons and a short "stream" to act as a biological fiilter. Any ideas on which type/model of pump would do the job?

niel

Re: solar direct pump for fish ponds

that would depend on how much water for how many head of cattle in determining the pump, but i have reservations that 70w of pv even with an mpp current booster will deliver enough power for you to run very many of the pumps as i believe you may need a bigger pump, again depending on how much water for how many head of cattle. you may need to get a rough estimate of how many gallons you would typically need in a day and figure a pump from that with some extra as cloudy days or shorter winter days need accounted for.

System2

Re: solar direct pump for fish ponds

OK, guess I wasn't clear enough in my first post, no cattle are involved, just a fish pond that I want to recirculate the water in it to filter and oxygenate for the fish and water lilys. I've had the pond for several years with no filtration or circulation but I want to add two more tanks and a stream for a biological filter. So basically what I was asking is what PV direct pump would operate on these two 35W panels.

niel

Re: solar direct pump for fish ponds

i would guess the panels would give about 4amps, but i seem to recall they may have been short on the cell count as the standard today is 36 cells per 12v of operation. the smaller number of cells could inhibit operations under full load or cloudy times. in addition to that the age of the pvs may mean you may need to derate the available power by 10% per 10yrs. now you don't need a high speed pump for this and you can look at the pumps available from this forum's sponcer: http://store.solar-electric.com/sodcwapu.html you may be better off seeing what some places that sell fish pond pumps have available to operate on 12v.
i'll guess that with a current booster, go with 2amps or less to be on the safe side. i don't know if the pv power you have is going to be enough to suit your needs or not. it depends on the size of the fish pond too i would think, but i'm thinking you don't want huge to do this and the smaller pumps out there for this purpose may even be cheaper if they are available for 12v operation. i suggest you do some searching on the internet to see your options.