automatic feeder advice needed

[The_Gopher]

I am currently going to be away for approx. 1 week and do not have anyone to feed my fish. I was currently looking at this feeder Penn Plax Daily-Double II Automatic Fish Feeder and was wondering if anyone had any first hand experience with it?

Or do you have an automatic feeder recomendation for me that you have personally used and can attest to? I have only 6 fish (gold barbs and one tiger barb....yes I know that tigers like to be in a community, but he continually kills all other tigers and is quite happy with the gold barbs only lol).

Thank you in advance. I just perfer to have first hand recomendations before I go out and buy a feeder.

 

[budrecki]

How long are you going to be away? Fish can go for several days without eating.

 

[Galaxie]

I'd recommend a couple of those cheap feeding pyramids you sink to the bottom. Electronic feeders are expensive and better for larger fish that need food like pellets.

 

[msouth468]

How long are you going to be away? Fish can go for several days without eating.

Dude, really, read the post.

Anyway, I have one of those Penn Plax auto feeders. And it seems to do fine. I've been gone for up to 5 days and haven't had a fish die yet. It feeds once every 6 hours. And you have to make sure there are not any large flakes that can get stuck in the tube and clog the feeder up. Other than that it is pretty easy to set up. You will have to test it yourself to make sure that it is letting the right amount of feed out that you want. That can get kinda frustrating. But, just remember that you can get pretty close to what you want, just not exact.

 

[The_Gopher]

Like I said, I'll be gone for about a week (perhaps even a full week)

I guess I could go the route of the food pyramids, but I dunno, never really trusted them I guess. I know my fish would be fine a couple days without food, but I wouldn't want them to go a whole week (these little hyper active guys are by pride and joy after all lol). I don't mind shelling out about 20 ish dollars for an automatic feeder if it works, that's no problem and that model is actually meant for only flake food not pellets.

Thanks msouth for your review on the feeder. I still have till the end of the month to decide which route to take.

 

[TKOS]

Those food pyramids are horrible. They will pollute the water plus can affect KH and Ph quite drastically. You would be better off not feeding them for a week.

I have used Hagens auto-feeder with decent success. It feeds every 12 hours so I make sure to set it to the absolute minimum so that over feeding doesn't occur.

 

[msouth468]

I would go for it.

They run about 12 bucks at Wal-Mart (I think). It doesn't have an on/off switch so when you put the batteries in it starts and when you take them out it stops.

And like I said, it feeds every 6 hours regardless of day or night. So, it won't over feed your fish. You can just set it to feed less than what you normaly would. It is a really easy device to operate. And if you have anymore questions about it feel free to pm me.