designing a 3d printable fish feeder (speciffically for seahorses)

Noah_Reefing

Active member
anyone have advice with 3d printing, i am going to try using a lulzbot taz 6 to 3d print a modular seahorse feeder which can be adjusted to the user's needs. for seahorses that are just starting out, you can thread on a feeder with hitching posts. if you want to feed live brine, i will make a live brine shrimp feeder (i need dimensions for that) if you have more confident seahorses you can just do a standard food trough. if you want to feed a lot of seahorses, i could invent a 2 attachment seahorse feeder that can be as long as you like. this could work with other species too with a nori feeder with a breech style design where you have a clip with nori and a pull part you pull the pulling part up then clip the nori on then drop it down. this could be connected to a servo adruino to program it to go off a few times a day so the fish get a controlled amount of food and a Paul B style mandarin feeder but that would require a nylon sheet to work. mabye just a standard frozen food broadcaster also. all the designs will be open source fusion 360 and i can convert that to any other autodesk software. i will even model extension tubes that are threaded so if you have a deep tank or you want to feed bottom feeders, you can use those. they could be adjusted to the specified height you want. i cannot decide if it would be more efficent to do a construction where you have a 3d printed threaded stick thats hollow that goes into a 3d printed threaded tube and you adjust the height. the tube is connected to a bracket w/ a 3d printed spacer bolt that screws to adjust to tank thickness. (in this scenaro, all the feeders would be omnidirectional) or i could do a 3d printed stick thats hollow but only the top half inch is threaded and it goes directly into the tank hanger bracket. the hanger bracket could be replaced with a floater so if you have a massive tank or you want to feed a lot of fish you can just float it.

(this is mostly spitballing right now but i am working on the seahorses design, i know nothing about 3d printers and 3d printing outside of how they work & how to do the software)
 
Screen Shot 2022-05-06 at 11.05.23 AM.png
 
I actually designed and patented a seahorse feeder many years ago. That patent ran out but the thing worked very well.

this one is for frozen food, i tried one of those and the seahorses just slithered away from it & the brineshrimp inside all died and didnt get stuck. i used the window screen method. how big of a hole would you use for one of these? i think i will try making the brineshrimp one next. one idea i had was to do it but with a hole in the bottom so you could put frozen food in it but not live. theoretically the brine would dangle out and the seahorse swim up to it and pull them through
 
I used PVC window screen. Two public aquariums and a few wholesalers here in New York used them and I sold hundreds with no complaints.

But it only works for live, adult brine shrimp. Not frozen
 
Are you needing one or trying to build something better then what’s on the market? I know salty critters have them available online .
I can’t help when it comes to 3d printing
 
Back
Top