I purchased a 2.5 gallon bowfront for my office desk but needed a way to feed my betta on weekends without the mess of a weekend feeder which just pollutes the water. While this feeder's mounting brackets were made to fit over a bowl,it was easily modified to fit on the back of my little bowfront, rectangular aquarium.The mounting bracket had to be shortened by scoring with scissors then cutting. I positioned it at the opening on the back side of the hood. Adding a small rubber band keeps the bracket clamped tight to the side of the tank. The original design, the feeder sets on a bracket which holds and balances the feeder, but does not provide a lot of 'grip', like that needed to hold to the side of a tank.
Because I mounted the feeder at the very small opening at the back of the hood, not all the pellets were getting into the tank.
I fashioned a paper shield out of a sticky note and a piece of tape to deflect them back into the tank. It works perfectly.
One can only use pellet food (no flake), but it's lightweight, runs on batteries, and is very reliable. I've heard refilling is a delicate procedure as the tabs that hold everything in place are plastic, but I have had no problems. It holds a lot of food, enough for months and months. I'd like to see it upgraded for the bowfront, but it was the best viable solution on the market.
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I bought this for our betta tank thinking it would be the perfect solution to keep him fed while we went out of town on a 3 week vacation. I was really wanting this to work and still ordered even after reading some of the negative reviews. I ordered this a few weeks before we left and tested it for a few days over an empty bowl as soon as we received it to make sure it worked. The feeder does not turn a full 360 degrees once it starts. We noticed that the feeder did start to rotate when we inserted the batteries but then it would randomly stop for no particular reason and we would have to rotate the gears in the unit to get it going again. When it did rotate a full 360 degrees, it didn't let out any of the food.I would not recommend this as this feeder is not reliable. If you do decide to buy the product anyway, make sure you do a test run a few days before you will be gone if using it during long periods away.
This product does come with feeding pellets which I'm still using to feed the fish. So, I basically spent $15 on a package of food that comes with a useless buggy feeder.
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I used the feeder while I was out of town for a week. When I got back my fish was still alive. I continued to allow it to feed the fish once I was back in town and it worked fairly reliably. There was a plastic tab on the inside of it that I had to break off because it appears my pellets were too big to fit through. Once that was done it worked perfectly with my pellets.
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After a lot of trepidation, I decided to use this when I had to go away for 2 weeks on vacation. My did some tests and saw that it would allow 3-6 pellets on a 24 hour cycle. I know many complain how you can't control the number of pellets, but if you go on vacation, then that's just something you have to risk (other than getting a betta-sitter). Remember, this product is used to help you betta SURVIVE when you are gone, and if you betta is used to 3 or a specific number of pellets, well then he would just have to live with not getting the same exact number of pellets while you are away. Eating an odd number of pellets a day when you are away is better than starving to death.Save 45% Off
