I had tried some of the other auto feeders on the market that rotate constantly on a single AA battery clock mechanism. None of them worked for me.
I purchased this after a friend of mine had the same one on his tank for over 1.5 years. It has also worked beautifully for me too. The digital display is easy to set if you follow the instruction sheet.
I also like the fact that it has a manual feed button, so I can provide a feeding whenever I want to without disrupting the preset times.
I spent a lot of money on the cheaper units and after getting frustrated every time, I finally bought this one and couldn't be happier.
I own 3 Eheim Everyday Fish Feeders. They are also called air feeders due to a fan used to feed air into the food containter when it activates, to help keep the food fresh. I run a home aquaponics system and so have various tanks to raise fingerlings before they go into my aquaponics tanks. This feeder is the only unit I use for these indoor tanks, though I use a professional US made super-feed feeder in my outdoor grow tank.
I highly recommend the Eheim brand and this particular feeder. I will comment on why I recommend this and then some special handling items.
First, as I mentioned I have three of these units. Two are run 24/7. These units are reliable, last between 1-2 weeks for feeding capacity (different sized fish supplied by each one), and built very well. The built well comes from the fact that one unit has fallen into the tank twice. Immediate recovery, turn off, then air drying of the internals was sufficient for the unit to operate as good as new. I have used these units for 8 months now without problem. They do come with a sticky backed velcro mount so that they are not prone to fall into the tank. I use those on the one that likes the water.
I have had problems with only one unit after about 20 days of first operation where it lost its programming, and upon replacing the batteries it operated for a few days and completely died. This occurred with use out of box, it was not dropped into the water :-) and it was used as recommended. I emailed Eheim, and was advised to return it to their factory or an authorized service center. I returned it to Eheim's Montreal office with a copy of the email and they sent a fixed unit back about 4 weeks later. So, this is why I also recommend the brand. Nothing is perfect, and when I got one lemon out of three -they fixed it.
On using these units:
* you must calibrate the feeder so that on an average run it feeds the amount you want -that is, weigh or measure the amount fed after 10 consecutive runs and then determine what the average is for each feed -it is a simple mechanical feed mechanism -this is why it is reliable -so it is not exact. Your fish are not exact either, they can eat a bit less sometimes.
* once you know how much to open the feeder, mark it with a permanent marker -you need to close it to refill, so this way you will know where to open it back to
* you can run the feeder up to 4 different times a day, and each time can have an optional second feed a minute after the first
* I grow tilapia, so I feed my fish only what they will completely eat in 2 minutes
* the unit is heavy on the side towards the water when it is full -when doing tank maintenance, remove it so it out of the way (obvious, but I did drop one unit twice)
* if your unit goes for a swim: take it out immediately, remove and discard the batteries, keep the battery door off and gently blow dry the unit. Dispose of wet food and clean out the food compartment. Once you are certain everything is DRY, then put fresh batteries in and reprogram the unit.
* when using the unit for the first time, allow a week (before you go on vacation) to ensure it is operating fine and feeding the way and amount you want -don't just set it up the night before you leave -this way you will see how long your feed lasts also
* the feeder does dispense less when it nears empty -but again, fish adapt
* I only use the unit with pellet food one feeder has a mix of 1/8" and 3/16" pellets, the second feeder has fingerling powder
Good luck!
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I use all eheim brand equipments for my fish tank because they are the best. So it was a no brainer to get an eheim feeder. However this thing is a complete disaster for small food/pellets used to feed little fish such as neon tetra etc.. The feeding sliding door is VERY cheap and badly design, it's loose and doesnt allow fine control. So you either dumps no food because the opening is too small or dump a tons of food messing up the water params.
Even worse when I went on vacation i set the feeding door to a small size just to be safe since too much food will cause a mini cycle + ammonia spike, which is far worse than feeding lesser amount to the fish for a few days. But when i came back my tank is completely full of food, the cheap sliding door of this feeder gradually opened up on its own while in operation. Luckily I have a very heavily planted tank with a lot of fast grower stem plants that are able to absorb the excess nutrients, so a complete disaster was avoided.
The sad part is the feed itself looks to be reliable and solid, just eheim decided to skimp on the most important part of the feed the sliding door that controls the feeding amount.
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Works as advertised except there's a major problem......I use pelletized food and feed 12 pellets three times daily, the design of this feeder does not drop the same amount of food each time it cycles. Once adjusted, it can drop anywhere from 4-15 pellets per feeding. You have an opening, which you adjust to allow a certain amount of food to be dispensed each cycle, but pellets can jam in the opening. If i open it further, way too many pellets come out. The only solution I came up with was to run it for three days into a pie plate until I averaged the proper number of pellets on a daily basis. I would really not recommend it for pelletized food.
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This is the best automatic aquarium feeder. Over the years I have owned many for multiple aquariums. I have used the feeder with flakes, pellets and both depending on my needs. I have never had any problems with clogging or food sticking.
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I bought this scrubber to clean my glass and acrylic aquariums, it works fine on the glass surface, but when i tried to clean the acrylic I immediately noticed a large amount of scratches all over it. I don't know why they sell it for both glass and acrylic, because of my experience i only recommend it to use on glass aquariums.
