Feeding station feedback please

[Northside Reef]

So I feel a feeding station would help with overfeeding my tank to get the seahorses to eat. here is my concept drawing.

the station has a clear feeder tube I attach to the station that I drop the food down and then remove leaving just the food in the station. I think a clear tube might help with the visualization of the food dropping down and might help bring the horses over to the tube once they're trained to recognize it. Thoughts?

 

[prettyfishy76]

Cool idea. I really like the multiple hitching posts.

To keep things simple (I'm super-lazy), I just put the food in a large net with a long handle, turn the pumps off and drop the net inside the tank, resting the net on a rock so that I don't have to hold onto it. The seahorses associate the pump shut-off with food so they start to swarm to the net. Then, they all hitch on the edge and eat until there isn't any mysis left. There is ZERO waste floating around the tank because it is all contained in the net. Once the seahorses have eaten their fill (all mysis is gone in less than 10 minutes), the net is removed and the pumps are turned back on. It's really easy and once they are done eating, there isn't any extra equipment in the tank. It didn't take long to train them to eat from the net...

 

[Northside Reef]

So glue is still drying but this is what it looks like, hopefully it does not look too horrible in the tank and even more - hopefully it works.

 

[Ryphen]

That's really sharp looking. I achieve the same effect with one of those sea squirt baster things and a rubbermaid container, but it doesn't look half as nice as yours.

 

[JLynn]

Clever! I'm sure they'll love 24/7 food access. (I am assuming the openings at the bottom allow it to act like one of those "automatic" cat food dispensers; correct me if I am wrong)

 

[Northside Reef]

No the opening was where the food would enter the dish from the tube.

So after a couple days with the feeder. The glass tube worked a little too good. the seahorses see the food but they cannot figure out that it is in a tube and they can't get to it, and they try to nab the mysis on the way down only to smack their faces into the tube. The tube is no more. The tube attachment at the bottom was removed since it really is not needed if there is no tube.

So basically my feeder station is a bowl with hitching posts that the seahorses do use sometimes or they just go inside the dish and eat. So far I have had as many as four horses in it so I have some work to do in getting them all trained. But this contraption is not needed a regular bowl would have worked just as well.

I now guide (round the horses up) with a pipette and squirt the food into the dish.

 

[ninal422]

Hi. Did you make the sea horse feeders for sale?