automatic feeder?
 

Hey all, Im often out of town on the weekends, friday evening/night through sunday night. I've heard of automatic feeders (HOB style Im guessing) that are programmable and will feed your fish twice and some three times a day. Can anyone recomend anything?
I've also seen at my LFS small white ..waffers? that I've seen fish eating off of. Looking for any advise :-) thanks!

doughnut

I've used one on my 55gal community tank for over 20 years. Works great for the fish I have. For one filling it lasts at least two weeks. Here's the one I have:

Feeding Aquarium Fish: Eheim 3581 "Feed-Air" Digital Automatic Feeder

its probably a better idea to get an automatic feeder assuming that any uneaten or dissolved food from the white bricks leaches into the water creating an ammonia spike. iv seen them for around 20 dollars so its not exactly a bank buster.

I looked into the link and did some searching WisFish, and Ive seen a few posts about people having to modify how/wear the food is added to the tank. Now I dont know how they had it set up and all, but they were talking about it just dumping a little on the floor here and there. I may just need to physically hold it and see if there would be a good spot on my 10g tank to attach it to some how. It does look fairly large though :|.

Thats a good point fighttest. I guess in the lfs they've got enough fish to keep up with it and if they dont **hopefully** its taken care of by other means. I was also asking if anyone could recomend one more then another. I've seen too many times that you get what you pay for and that the item marked down $9.99 is marked down for a reason.

doughnut

If you're just out of town on the weekends don't bother. Your fish will be fine going two days without eating. Just feed them Friday afternoon and then Monday morning. I've had a tank at my office for nearly a year now and the fish get fed Monday to Friday and nothing on the weekends. They're all fat and happy.

TOTALLY AGREE.... your fish will be just fine for a couple a days with out your hand for food...

another aspect to that they will actually go foraging for their food.... and might just clean up the tank

some while your gone ( lol ) They will be just fine !!!

+one for feeding on friday before you leave. Just don't overfeed on monday in an effort to make up for sat and sunday.

Hmm well I guess feeding friday when I leave and sunday evening when I return would be alright. Like yall mentioned in an office setting the fish arnt fed the whole weekend..maybe I just wanted to be sure they wouldnt be under any more stress then needed. But I will look into an automatic feeder more incase I'm out for an extended time.

thanks
doughnut

I personally would not use an automatic feeder, there are just too many possibilities of something going wrong. I have heard horrible instances where the feeder malfunctions and totally overfeeds so you come home to an awful mess of a tank. If you do your partial water change and a good feeding before you leave, your fish will be fine for a few days until you come back. Good Luck

Thanks for the information everyone. I really appreciate it.

doughnut