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Automatic Fish Feeder

OnTheReef

OnTheReef

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Folks,

Going on vacation the last two weeks of September. My daughter is going to monitor the systems while I am gone, but to make her job easier, I am going to supplement the pill box of food in the freezer (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001TEWKMM), I am going to run an automatic feeder. I am getting the fish used to eating the foods that I will feed automatically:

Formula II
https://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Nutrition-Formula-Flake-2-5oz/dp/B00025Z6WA
Ocean Nutrition Bulk Seaweeds Green Marine (50 Sheets)
https://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Nutrition-Seaweeds-Marine-Sheets/dp/B0002DJ5OM

I am reading reviews of feeders and will probably try a few. These two bubbled up the top of my list:

EHEIM Everyday Fish Feeder Programmable Automatic Food Dispenser
|https://www.amazon.com/Everyday-Feeder-Programmable-Automatic-Dispenser/dp/B001F2117I

Fish Mate F14 Aquarium Fish Feeder
https://www.amazon.com/Fish-Mate-F14-Aquarium-Feeder/dp/B000YK5W18

I particularly like the Fish Mate, since I will be able to set the portions up in advance. Anyone have experience with either of these products? Have a rant or rave about another feeder? If so, light up this thread!

Thanks,
On The Reef
 
I have no experience with auto feeders but wanted to offer the use of a new Apex auto feeder if you are interested and can use it. It was for a school tank for vacation/summer use but then we did not get fish. I will not be using it this month (still no fish). I am in Pleasant Hill - East Bay.
 
Ones like the Fish Mate are good for the reason you described, however make sure that it can drop as much food as you need. The Eheim one has one main problem, you really need somewhat uniform size stuff, if you have flakes you absolutely need to crush them up with no large pieces that can clog it up, however I find the Eheim one is nice in that you can very easily figure out how much food will come out (just press the cycle button on it) so it's easy to test out.

Also consider getting getting a feeding ring, so that floating flakes don't go everywhere in the tank (and usually into the overflow)
https://www.amazon.com/Nutrafin-Max-Feeding-Ring-Suction/dp/B0002DI0TI
 
I use two, and ehiem and some spinning one. I don't trust just having one. I also toss in one of those calcium encased feeding pyramids which ... hmmm come to think of it, I wonder if that is what caused my very high Ca readings and low Alk readings ... hmmm...

But, I also ask a friend to drop in to add a pinch of food now and then.

I also "preload" my sump with as much RO/DI as I can and I add a 5 gallon bottle to my RO/DI auto-top-off system.

V
 
Well I'm leaving for MACNA tomorrow morning, and have been looking for my feeders, I have 2 eheim ones, I can fine the parts for about 0.8 of them :D Not sure if it still works (since I couldn't find a complete set I didn't even both testing) and the cover for the food holder is who knows where. However I did find one similar to the Fish Mate one, the problem is it's 6 hours between food drops that testing is a major pain.

Oh well, I'm sure it'll work good enough, and worst case scenario, fish without food for 5 days isn't going to kill them. There are plenty of aiptasia to eat! :D
 
sfsuphysics said:
Well I'm leaving for MACNA tomorrow morning, and have been looking for my feeders, I have 2 eheim ones, I can fine the parts for about 0.8 of them :D Not sure if it still works (since I couldn't find a complete set I didn't even both testing) and the cover for the food holder is who knows where. However I did find one similar to the Fish Mate one, the problem is it's 6 hours between food drops that testing is a major pain.

Oh well, I'm sure it'll work good enough, and worst case scenario, fish without food for 5 days isn't going to kill them. There are plenty of aiptasia to eat! :D
Click to expand...

Ah, well best way to test them in an unhurried fashion is to run them over a piece of paper overnight and see if any food came out.

I have an older eheim too, that I dropped intothe tank and it surprisingly doesn't work anymore.

V
 
sfsuphysics said:
Well I'm leaving for MACNA tomorrow morning, and have been looking for my feeders, I have 2 eheim ones, I can fine the parts for about 0.8 of them :D Not sure if it still works (since I couldn't find a complete set I didn't even both testing) and the cover for the food holder is who knows where. However I did find one similar to the Fish Mate one, the problem is it's 6 hours between food drops that testing is a major pain.

Oh well, I'm sure it'll work good enough, and worst case scenario, fish without food for 5 days isn't going to kill them. There are plenty of aiptasia to eat! :D
Click to expand...
I got an eheim you can borrow
 
Thanks Mike, let me see how this one turns out, I gotta leave for work in a couple hours, if the thing didn't move at all I'll send you a text or something. Unfortunately if you won't be home around 6ish there's no other real time to pick it up, as we're leaving at 5:30am for the airport (early flight)
 
I have tried quite a few.

For a single vacation, that fish-mate is a good plan.
Works well, handles anything.
The problem I had was maintenance over time.

For my regular feeding, I use these:
Small pellets: Ehiem everyday
Flake: Ehiem Twin
 
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