High Tide Aquatics

Any automatic feeder recommendations?

gmdcdvm

Supporting Member
Anyone have any recommendations on an automatic feeder? Thinking of setting one up for vacations.
Anyone tried the Neptune feeder? Reviews were mixed.

Gerry
 
This one: https://www.avastmarine.com/collections/avast-built/products/autofeeder

I've tried eheim, neptune feeder, and a few others, but the avast plank is by far the absolute best.

Eheim: the one I had was battery powered, and tended to fall over sometimes. Also kind of loud. Can't control the dispensing amount that well.
Neptune: THE LOUDEST THING IN THE WORLD. Also the smallest setting would still dump a ton of food. Got clogged quite a bit. I was using mostly TDS pellets.
Avast Plank: completely silent. You can feed throughout the day as much or as little as you want. Holds plenty of food. Ultimate control of how much you feed. I use Avast's reef jerky (mostly freeze dried foods for corals/fish) and TDS pellets. If you feed freeze dried foods, like their Reef Jerky, it's naturally buoyant or whatever, so it stays. in the water column when it's rehydrated in their little swirling tube. This can even be done in your sump's return chamber, so you can keep your feeder out of sight! I'm going to be mounting mine in my return chamber of my sump in the new tank.

Avast Plank works best with a controller (like Neptune) because you can really tune it to the seconds.
 
This one: https://www.avastmarine.com/collections/avast-built/products/autofeeder

I've tried eheim, neptune feeder, and a few others, but the avast plank is by far the absolute best.

Eheim: the one I had was battery powered, and tended to fall over sometimes. Also kind of loud. Can't control the dispensing amount that well.
Neptune: THE LOUDEST THING IN THE WORLD. Also the smallest setting would still dump a ton of food. Got clogged quite a bit. I was using mostly TDS pellets.
Avast Plank: completely silent. You can feed throughout the day as much or as little as you want. Holds plenty of food. Ultimate control of how much you feed. I use Avast's reef jerky (mostly freeze dried foods for corals/fish) and TDS pellets. If you feed freeze dried foods, like their Reef Jerky, it's naturally buoyant or whatever, so it stays. in the water column when it's rehydrated in their little swirling tube. This can even be done in your sump's return chamber, so you can keep your feeder out of sight! I'm going to be mounting mine in my return chamber of my sump in the new tank.

Avast Plank works best with a controller (like Neptune) because you can really tune it to the seconds.
Interesting. Can you elaborate on what seems to make it more reliable and controllable? Is it the attachment point or the motor or...?

I'm wondering because a feeder seems like a simple device so I'm wondering what they did different
 
Interesting. Can you elaborate on what seems to make it more reliable and controllable? Is it the attachment point or the motor or...?

I'm wondering because a feeder seems like a simple device so I'm wondering what they did different
The avast is just a motor with an electrical plug. The motor runs an auger. So you can run it as long or as short as you want to get the amount you want. It's not a number of spins of an inaccurate canister.
 
The avast is just a motor with an electrical plug. The motor runs an auger. So you can run it as long or as short as you want to get the amount you want. It's not a number of spins of an inaccurate canister.

The auger is the key to it all. It also keeps all the food pushed to the front constantly, so it's very consistent. I like how simple yet elegant it is. Also, it's completely silent. If you have automatic feeders, you know how loud they can get.
 
This one: https://www.avastmarine.com/collections/avast-built/products/autofeeder

I've tried eheim, neptune feeder, and a few others, but the avast plank is by far the absolute best.

Eheim: the one I had was battery powered, and tended to fall over sometimes. Also kind of loud. Can't control the dispensing amount that well.
Neptune: THE LOUDEST THING IN THE WORLD. Also the smallest setting would still dump a ton of food. Got clogged quite a bit. I was using mostly TDS pellets.
Avast Plank: completely silent. You can feed throughout the day as much or as little as you want. Holds plenty of food. Ultimate control of how much you feed. I use Avast's reef jerky (mostly freeze dried foods for corals/fish) and TDS pellets. If you feed freeze dried foods, like their Reef Jerky, it's naturally buoyant or whatever, so it stays. in the water column when it's rehydrated in their little swirling tube. This can even be done in your sump's return chamber, so you can keep your feeder out of sight! I'm going to be mounting mine in my return chamber of my sump in the new tank.

Avast Plank works best with a controller (like Neptune) because you can really tune it to the seconds.
I just purchased an avast plank myself this week. The neptune AFS is driving me insane with its inconsistency in food delivery from almost nothing delivered to blatto-tank filled with pellets everywhere.

@kinetic -how do you put it in the return chamber? Once it comes out of the tube it Just gets sucked into the return pump and sucked into the dt. Now I am really piqued on this.
 
I just purchased an avast plank myself this week. The neptune AFS is driving me insane with its inconsistency in food delivery from almost nothing delivered to blatto-tank filled with pellets everywhere.

@kinetic -how do you put it in the return chamber? Once it comes out of the tube it Just gets sucked into the return pump and sucked into the dt. Now I am really piqued on this.

I haven’t done it yet, but lots of people do this in their return chambers. Yes it gets sucked up by the return pump!
 
I have the Neptune feeder setup for vacation feeding and it's been solid for me. As other have mention some of the pellets gets drawn into the overflow, but I have place the feeder the further away to help prevent this. I also have a webcam setup so I can see the feeding happening to make sure everything is working.
 
I use this so pellets don't go into the overflow.
Screenshot_20221017_101024.jpg
 
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I have been very happy with Hydros feeder. I think it’s just a rebrand eheim. Since I’m on hydros ecosystems, the having the feeder that link with rest of the devices awesome. I can turn off the pump (and stay off for 10mins) everytime the feeder activate.

I’m sure Neptune have similar functionality.
 
Are the eheims annoying to get food out of, or just the timing issues? I ask because on the robo tank site he has instructions on how to run an eheim using a 5v power input and then you can just control it with whatever. It's effectively hot wired.

I've been thinking of trying that, but that assumes the rest of the device is good. I also have a 3d printer so I was thinking I could do something for the exhaust shoot people seem to tape over, but I don't really get what the full list of annoying things are.

I just can't bring myself to spend $200 on a feeder.
 
For the Eheim it has a sliding door to control the volume per feed. And it can very hard to get a small dose with flake food without needing to pre-crush the flakes (and they tended to stick to the walls) and you need a bunch of food to get sufficient volume for the device to work reliably. The feeder depends on the rotation of the food container and a small decline to get the food to drop. So it's best for pellet food that can roll. That's at least the problems I've run into but then I was trying to feed a 10 gallon or 24 gallon. If you could open the door more and tolerate larger doses those problems should be diminished with a larger tank.
You may or may not have problem fitting it onto a tank that has a thick rim (I'd need to measure it to see what the tolerance is).
The programming wasn't that hard and if you could wire it instead of using batteries that would take out another worry (battery failing).
 
For the eheim you can use tape to control the opening side better (stick a small piece of tape to itself where it covers the opening so the food doesn't get stuck to the tape). I have 3 for vacations and it's done well with flake (you have to fill up the chamber with a lot though) and definitely works better for pellets along with a floating feeder ring so they don't get sucked into the overflow before they can sink.
 
I also have the Hydros (looks like basically the eheim that's hardwired and app-controllable) and agree with some of the problems here, though it's generally pretty good.

One big issue nobody has mentioned yet: A couple of my fat piggy fish can actually hear it start running, run to the feeding ring, and devour all of the pellets while they are still floating. It was amusing at first but it just means that only 2-3 of my fish benefit from the feedings...

Anyway the Avast looks like it solves all of these problems (including having to use an annoying floating feeding ring - another thing to clean and another magnet to drop behind your tank!). I just ordered one!! Thanks for the recommendation. @kinetic :)
 
I also have the Hydros (looks like basically the eheim that's hardwired and app-controllable) and agree with some of the problems here, though it's generally pretty good.

One big issue nobody has mentioned yet: A couple of my fat piggy fish can actually hear it start running, run to the feeding ring, and devour all of the pellets while they are still floating. It was amusing at first but it just means that only 2-3 of my fish benefit from the feedings...

Anyway the Avast looks like it solves all of these problems (including having to use an annoying floating feeding ring - another thing to clean and another magnet to drop behind your tank!). I just ordered one!! Thanks for the recommendation. @kinetic :)
I’ve had 2 Avast feeders and the fish definitely figure out when the augur starts moving. The Anthias are first to the party. Used to have one that would sit in the mixing tube at feeding time.
 
Feed more! Haha, my fish hear my eheim go and they get sloppy while eating and the pellets sink. Pavlov's response is strong in the animal kingdom.
 
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