Yardwork Vlog - Restoring An Old Water Fountain Using Poposoap Solar W

Introduction

Hey, what's up, aquam Migos? How are you guys doing today? So today, we're actually going to be taking a break from the Koon build in this video. I actually got this solar-powered pump sent to me by the brand Poposoap. It's right here inside this box, and inside that box should be a small water pump, a solar panel, and some attachments. In today's video, what I want to do is I want to use that to make kind of a patio bowl-type thing for the summertime, which I can use to maybe keep some of my guppies outdoors again, as you've probably seen me do in the past.

Product Overview and Unboxing

So, I'll go ahead and put the Amazon link for this down in the description below. It goes for $89, and yeah, let's go ahead and get started by opening it. All right, guys, so pretty cool. If we take a look at the solar panel over here, we'll see that it's almost the size of the box. I mean, it's a pretty decent size. I'll go ahead and put my foot next to that for some reference. Then we have the pump over here. If we take a look at the front of the pump, there's a knob right there that you can turn, and the instructions say that that's called the rotary control valve.

Pump Features and Assembly

So I'm not 100% sure yet what that does. I'm sure I'll figure it out once I start putting it together, but I'm guessing it probably has something to do with controlling the water flow because, as you can see, there is a plus and minus symbol. So I'm assuming plus will be for higher flow, and minus will be for lower flow, but yeah, let's go ahead and see. These look like some extra pre-filters for the front end of the pump. If we go ahead and open the pump up real quick, um we'll see that there is one of those sponges in here. So I'm going to go ahead and put this thing together, and I'm going to start off by hosing out that pre-molded mini pond that I have.

Setting Up the Mini Pond

I'm going to set it up probably right here. It would be nice if I set it up basically, like, maybe in front of that small table. All right, guys, so I'm filling it up with water right now, but I'm probably only going to fill it up about halfway because I'm not actually entirely sure I'm going to leave this here. I might end up moving it somewhere else, but just to test it out for today and make sure everything works, I'll set it up here for now.

Optional Battery Backup

I was just taking a look at the instructions, and I thought this was pretty cool. There's an optional battery backup that I guess you can buy to help supply power to the pump even when there's not enough sunlight, so that's actually pretty cool. So the pump can actually keep running even when the sun's not out. All right, guys, so this is what we have so far. I went ahead and attached the fountain attachment to the top so that it would stick out of the water and make a little fountain. Also, I went ahead and turned the knob all the way to the plus side.

Performance and Solar Panel Efficiency

Wow, I'm actually really impressed by how high the water is actually spraying just purely from that solar panel supplying power. Watch when I walk in front of the solar panel and create a little bit of shade over it. Watch this. So now I completely blocked the solar panel, and the water completely stopped spraying, and as soon as I moved away, it went again; that's crazy. This one here is probably my favorite Fountainhead attachment. It's like it almost makes a half-sphere. Whoa, that is so cool.

Building a Mini Pond Filter

All right, guys, so far, I think this is pretty cool, but what I would like to do is I would like to take it a step further and build kind of a mini pond filter. Some of you guys may remember that a long time ago, I made a mini pond filter for my indoor guppy pond, and I actually have it inside the big koi pond right now just temporarily to get some water movement in there so that the water's not stagnant. Pretty much what I did is I got one of those planter buckets, put a pond pump inside it, and filled the planter with lava rocks to act as biological filtration. I feel like I could do something similar with this one.

Considerations for Nighttime Filtration

The only downside of the setup that I have right now is that I don't have that backup battery, so there won't be any filtration during the night time, but the good thing is that the entire filter will be submerged in water, so hopefully we won't lose that beneficial bacteria. But of course, I'm going to have to test it out, and then if I find that I need to get that battery, I'll go ahead and get that just to keep the filtration going 24/7, but I'm going to go ahead and make a small of filter for this pump right now.

Creating a Bio Filter with Lava Rocks

All right, guys, so basically, the idea behind this mini pond filter is that the pump is at the bottom of that bucket, and on top of that is a bunch of lava rocks. I could even add some more. I still have some more room for even more lava rocks, so what happens is the water from the pond will get sucked down into that pump, but to reach the pump, the water has to pass through all those lava rocks, and over time the lava rocks will colonize the beneficial bacteria which will convert the ammonia from fish waste into nitrites and then into nitrates. Now, if I was planning on adding fish to this right now, which I'm not going to right now, but if I was what would instead of putting new lava rocks in that bucket, I would have gone over here and opened up one of my pond filters and taken some lava rocks out of these trash cans. This is my biological filtration for the pool pond, and both of those trash cans are filled with lava rocks.

Cycling the Filter and Water Parameters

So, if I did want to add fish to that mini pond right now, I would have just taken lava rocks out of these because these lava rocks, AKA filter media, already cycled with that beneficial bacteria, so I would have gone ahead and added those instead of brand new lava rocks. Now, if you're someone who doesn't already own a pond or an aquarium and this is your first time attempting to make a pond, you can use brand new lava rocks like I just did right now, but you're going to have to cycle them here where I live our tap water does have a small amount of ammonia in it, one part per million ammonia. If you're trying to cycle your pond from scratch, what you need to do is probably add something like API quick start. That's the one that I sometimes use. It's called API quick start; basically, it helps jump-start the nitrogen cycle in your pond or aquarium. Then, what you want to do is you want to test your water parameters, get yourself a test kit like the API master test kit, and see where your water parameters are at. If your water does not have an ammonia reading, you're going to want to add ammonia to your water. One way you can do that is by adding fish food. Just add fish food to your water over the course of a few days and see if you get an ammonia spike in your test kit. Then, just let your filter run and just keep testing your water. Once you're getting a zero part per million ammonia reading, a zero part perm million nitrite reading, and you are getting a nitrate reading, that means that your pond is cycled and can go ahead and safely add fish, but don't add too many fish because that will spike the ammonia again. So you don't want to add too many fish, and you want to make sure that your pond filter is cycled.

Final Thoughts and Recommendations

But yeah, also if I was trying to keep fish in here, I would also need that extra battery supply to store power, um, during the night time, so the pump doesn't just randomly turn off, and then we'd get an ammonia spike, and you know that would create problems. But yeah, I'm really impressed so far by this Poposoap solar-powered pond filter. Once again, I will have the Amazon link to it down in the description below. I think for the cost of $89, I think that's actually pretty good, and I was not expecting the solar panel to be that big, so I mean that thing is definitely, or at least it seems to be like it's pretty strong. The Amazon page says that this is a 320g per hour pump. So anyway, guys, that's going to be just about it for this video. I have more videos coming on the koi pond really soon, and actually, before I close out this video, I want to feed my fish really quickly.