Auto fish feeders

[Perbud]

Hi All.,Does anyone have any good experiences with auto fish feeders?

 

[Barry Tetra]

I don't recommended auto feeder because it's not necessary, fish unlike other mammal they only need food for swimming.

 

[BoomerXIV]

Hi All.,Does anyone have any good experiences with auto fish feeders?

Depends, are you travelling a lot? i say buy 1 for emergency. Yes fish could survive without foods for several days, but why risk it if there's a simple solution?
but for daily feeding, manual is better, you could observe your fish better when feeding them

 

[Raws69]

Hi when you say they can survive for days without food, are we talking just a few or up to a week? I’ve also been looking into these to cover holidays etc. Assuming they are needed for a weeks cover, any recommendations (uk)?

cheers

 

[madmark285]

but for daily feeding, manual is better, you could observe your fish better when feeding them

On a Youtube video, a wholesale breeder stated he feeds the fish 'continuously' ie: many times/day. This may be the case where multiple feedings are required to insure that all the fish get feed. On another youtube, the owner of aquarium co-op discuss the small belly size of Tiger Barbs, it is far better to give these guys many feedings/day. My guess that herbivores such as Tiger barbs snack on food all day in their natural environment. Even for humans, eating small meals every couple hours is optimal.

So a hybrid system of using automatic feed feeder when you are away at work then manually feeding when home seems the optimal method of feeding. But the big question, how accurate are automatic feeders?

The Fish Mate F14 Aquarium Fish Feeder is highly accurate as you control the amount and type of food in each compartment and they claim "Food is distributed over several hours". The down side, it only holds 14 feedings.

Not sure about the rotating barrel feeders.

 

[BoomerXIV]

Hi when you say they can survive for days without food, are we talking just a few or up to a week? I’ve also been looking into these to cover holidays etc. Assuming they are needed for a weeks cover, any recommendations (uk)?

cheers

I'm pretty sure you could find some articles that says they could survive without food for a week. But personally I won't let my fish starve for a week though. I think the longest period of time I don't give my fish foods is 3 or 4 days

 

[BoomerXIV]

On a Youtube video, a wholesale breeder stated he feeds the fish 'continuously' ie: many times/day. This may be the case where multiple feedings are required to insure that all the fish get feed. On another youtube, the owner of aquarium co-op discuss the small belly size of Tiger Barbs, it is far better to give these guys many feedings/day. My guess that herbivores such as Tiger barbs snack on food all day in their natural environment. Even for humans, eating small meals every couple hours is optimal.

So a hybrid system of using automatic feed feeder when you are away at work then manually feeding when home seems the optimal method of feeding. But the big question, how accurate are automatic feeders?

The Fish Mate F14 Aquarium Fish Feeder is highly accurate as you control the amount and type of food in each compartment and they claim "Food is distributed over several hours". The down side, it only holds 14 feedings.

Not sure about the rotating barrel feeders.

Mine is rotating type. I prefer smaller qty but twice. So it rotate and give a small amounts of foods, and several seconds later it rotate again and give another small amount of foods. It's not perfect, but at least the food distributed to all of my fish (I hope). Then again I don't usually use that, I feed my fish twice a day, before I go to work, and after I come home

 

[Lajos_Detari]

Fish can survive easily for a week without food.
Bigger fish can last longer than smaller.

But if you have bigger/more aggressive fish which you afraid may eat your smaller fish, then it might be a good idea to use auto feeder when you are away for a week..
Many auto feeders have problems in dispensing the food.
Some have opening that is too big and it will dispense too much food each time when it turn/rotate.
And at other time, it may fail to dispense any food at all.

If you really want an auto feeder, make sure that you buy one with good quality and design, else the auto feeder become useless.

 

[madmark285]

For my birthday this Friday, I am getting a 75 gallon tank which means I need to buy a lot of equipment and hence, an automatic fish feeder is on the bottom of my list of things to buy. But here in the US, Amazon does offer numerous affordable models such as KUIENSI Automatic Fish Feeder for $19. Just not sure how well these work.

 

[BoomerXIV]

For my birthday this Friday, I am getting a 75 gallon tank which means I need to buy a lot of equipment and hence, an automatic fish feeder is on the bottom of my list of things to buy. But here in the US, Amazon does offer numerous affordable models such as KUIENSI Automatic Fish Feeder for $19. Just not sure how well these work.

So this is for your new tank? I think you don't have to buy it now, since usually cycling the tank need a lot of times. So you probably wont stock it in near future

 

[kwi]

If you do get one run it while your at home so you know it works as you expect.
Issues I've heard are overfeeding, or hunidity causes feed to clump and then it either doesn't dispense or stays in a ball.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

I've heard too many horror stories of auto feeders jamming and dumping a weeks worth of food into a tank at once, causing massive ammonia spikes - I'd be too much of a nervous wreck to trust one. Most fish can easily go for a week without feeding except for fry, and fry need more care than an autofeeder can handle anyway, since they need a lot of water changes.

If I'm going away for a few days to a week, I portion out daily food amounts into one of those elderly people pill dispensers, so it's foolproof for someone else to feed the right amount. If I were going to be away for two weeks or more, I'd tape one or two baggies of food portions to the tank, and ask them to pop in once or twice and only feed the one baggy at a time.

If you want to try an auto feeder though, I'd get it long in advance and try it out on the tank a few times while you're there and can do large water changes if it does jam and dump the entire contents.

 

[seangee]

I travel a lot for work (well until earlier this year) and was regularly away for 1, 2 or occasionally 3 weeks. I have never fed my fish while away.
I have seen plenty of posts about ammonia spikes caused by feeders dumping their load and killing all their fish.
I have never seen anyone post that their fish starved to death in two weeks.

Fish do not need energy (food) to stay warm, so unless you are regularly away for more than a week don't bother. Obviously fry, and some obligate carnivores, are different.

 

[Raws69]

Cheers people. You’ve put my mind at rest re feeding whilst away.

 

[Lajos_Detari]

Another advice that I would like to give you.
Before you use the auto feeder, you need to test it first outside the tank first.
You don't want to test it directly on your tank as sometimes it will dispense too much food.

Usually I will put a piece of old newspaper on the floor with the auto feeder to test it.

I will turn on the auto feeder and let it rotate and dispense food on the newspaper.
By doing this, you can gauge how much food it actually dispense on each rotation. If there is too much food being dispense, then you have to reduce the opening of the auto feeder.

Anyway, you may end up not using the auto feeder at all.
I have 3-4 auto feeders but I rarely used it nowadays even if I am away for a week to 10 days.