Our mission

Auto feeders

I'd like to add an autofeeder to my tank since i will be away for the holidays. Any recommendations ? review on what you currently have? pros/cons?

I'm thinking about adding the apex one but there are so many i thought i'd ask peoples personal experience.
 
I have both, and I think the eheim one is way better than the neptune autofeeder. It's easy to program. It is MUCH quieter, and if you just want to feed once, there is a button to push for that. Neptune's autofeeder is easy to dump the entire pellet container into the tank if you're not careful. It's super loud. It's more complicated to program (less intuitive) and you can't easily feed an extra time without programming it in. Neptune feeder is also many times more expensive.

The only benefit in my mind to having the neptune one, is if you want to turn down flow or skimmer etc during feeding.

For any autofeeder, I think it's essential to have a feed ring or something like that so pellets don't get wasted into the overflow.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I have both as well and it really depends on how often and how much you want to feed. As mentioned, the Eheim one is ultra easy to use and for most applications, it's the cheaper and better alternative. The Apex makes more sense if you use Fusion, feed small pellets/flakes, or feed more than 4x a day. Fusion makes it easy to manually feed without you having to manually push a button (pro/con argument here). Apex handles smaller pellets better and you can feed more than 4x a day. During the holidays when I was out of the office for 2 weeks last year, I had it kick in 8x each day. It would take 2 Eheim feeders to accomplish this, which I've done before in my past setup.
 
I use the Intellifeed feeder. This is the same feeder as the APEX without the apex guts. Comes with buttons and an LCD. Allows for one time-push button feed and can program for 4 different times and up to 3 rotations each of the 4 times. I haven't had an issue with this feeder, time keeping isn't very good though, it's always off regardless how often I reset the time.

https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/intellifeed-aquarium-fish-feeder-lifegard-aquatics.html
 
Slightly off topic, but what do you guys think about putting the auto feeder over the return area of the sump, so that the return pump disperses the food into the tank? Obviously only for tanks that have a separate compartment for the return. I’ve tried it a few times manually and it seems to work well.

That would keep it out of sight, make the noisiness of the feeder less of an issue, and make it so you don’t need a feeding ring since the food won’t be on the surface in the display tank.

I got the idea from Will’s (@Wlachnit) tank where he has a sign that says “feed here” and points at the return compartment for members of the family who can’t reach the top of the tank, lol.
 
My return feeds my algae reactors and two media reactors, so in my case, I'd probably have a lot of wasted food and an unnecessary addition to unwanted nutrients. Probably ok to do once in a while or if your return only sends water to DT.
 
Good point, clearly you wouldn’t want to do this if you have a manifold. I was planning to branch my return to a reactor soon, but this makes me think twice.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro
 
Yeah I did this for awhile with my frozen food feeder, but it was junking up my return compartment and my reactor.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Is going the distance and getting everything apex controlled (like shutting down pumps while feeding) worth it? Or just a feeding ring would suffice?
 
Back
Top