who uses automatic fish feeders

[jmccown]

going on vacation in a month and need to look into how effective these are or whether I should train someone to come and feed my fish while I am gone. Can you guys recommend a good/cheap one?

 

[mcox33]

for freshwater my brother in law uses those white block ones like Jo-Mars sells.

For Saltwater depending on how long you are going to be away it might be best to just feed them heavy for a few days before you leave then don't feed while you are gone.

 

[LtPiper]

I've had somebody come in and feed as my auto top off needs water daily and my gold fish managed to eat the 7 day multiday feeders in one day. It would depend on how your tanks are setup and how the animals in it eat.

 

[sixliner6]

If you ATO needs water daily, then it's not much of a help

 

[jmccown]

We'll be gone about 5 or 6 days. My water level should be okay. I'm not worried about that, just feeding my fish is my main concern. I figured I could load it with formula 1/2 and some small New Life Spectrum pellets they'd be okay for a few days. I've just heard horror stories where the machines malfunctioned and cause entires systems to crash. That's why Im posting to see who has used them successfully on their SW tanks.

 

[MattG]

I have used an eheim air auto feed maybe 10 times for lengths of 1 week - 1 month. I cant promise it fed everytime but it sure looked that way. The fish had no problems. Only downside to the eheim unit is the mounting (it stinks).

 

[fishmon]

rainbow lifeguard has a really nice feeder that will feed 1 per day for 14days or 2x for 7 and you place the amount of food into each days ration holder it has an optional hopper that will feed for a month or longer too, I've used one flawlessly on one of my accounts for over a year now (it will prolly screw up tommorow now that i've talked good about it) seriously they are great, a little pricier than some others but your guaranteed to not overfeed/underfeed. jmo

 

[Reef4Fun]

I bought the cheep one fro walmart that runs on a battery and used it last month, we went on vacation for a week. It feeds twice a day. I did however have someone come in every other day to add top off water and check things, she also feed them on those days because the feeder does not dose that much. As I said, its a cheep one but I mainly got it for weekend getaways.

 

[LtPiper]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10268047#post10268047 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sixliner6
If you ATO needs water daily, then it's not much of a help

Better once a day than once an hour

 

[firefish2020]

Just curious. what kind of ATO needs water that often? My osmolator keeps the system supplied for about 9 days. Couldn't you use a larger reservoir?

 

[Reef4Fun]

I dont have an ATO, so when we went on vacation two weeks ago for a week, I left my neighbor with 10 gallons of RO/DI water and she kept it filled to the line for me, when I got back it was at the line and about a cup of water left, lol, but what i was getting at is, isn't that an awful lot of evaporation for LtPiper?

 

[LtPiper]

I only have room for a 2 1/2 gallon tank. It uses about 1-1 1/2 gallons a day (actually over night only 1/4 gallon during the day) so if I don't fill it daily it runs out after two night cycles.