Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I understand that there are some on the market but does any one know where I might be able to buy a automatic fish feeder from .

Are you happy to make an online purchase or do you want to walk into a store and get one DBird?

Online would be OK,it is my brother that wants one right now and he is only a hour from Perth but either way would be alright as long as it worked.Otherwise we may have to make one and getting it right first up is not always possible.

There is a unit available on Ebay which I have purchased but not yet tired. Think it is about $60 and holds 1-2L of pellets. Powered by C size batteries.

You will probably find that it doesn't have a fine enough adjustment to feed only a tiny amount of feed. At least that is what I found with most "pet" feeders I or others I know have tried.
Test it out and let us know.

Or that anything smaller than a 4mm pellet... will just drop straight through the hopper....

Or... it wont deal with anything bigger than a 3mm pellet....

Or... it might just randomly decide to dump half the hopper into the fish tank...

Thanks for your input everyone,I was going past BYAP today and thought they might have one but they don't stock them for the reasons that you have all mentioned.It looks like we will have to try making one and if it works we will let you know .

How many fish are you wanting to feed... and how frequently.. dbird....

There are feeders available... but functionality, and reliability... often come with an associated price....

You can make a DIY on demand pendulum feeder... threads here on the forum... and searchable on the web... or even EG's site...

I dont trust any of them - when fish go off feed i dont want to know that something continues to dump feed and create some kind of water chemistry disaster.

Hey Dbird, I tried this type from ebay. Worked for a while but eventually blocked up with fines. No big deal you just need to remove base cover and blow out with compressed air. They were hard to control and like Rupert said the smaller 2mm pellets would flow through them. For that reason there sitting in the shed. You can have both of them if you want as I'm never going to use them again.



I bought two 10L Cloverleaf fish feeders a year ago and there still trucking along. They give you more control, actually down to the second with up to eight feeds a day. They use a screw feeder rather than a carousel and have an agitator in them as well. They are expensive, $380ea but my system wouldn't work with out them. I've used 2,4 and 6mm pellets in them with no problems. They also work of the mains so if you have a power failure your fish stop getting fed. The only issue I've had so far with these is the controllers. I had a rechargeable button battery in a circuit board shit itself. Easy fix, used a 3V AA with soldered tails mounted externally with a figure eight cable to the circuit board. Aussiekoiwa.com in Perth stocks them.

Captainron is right about monitoring them as disaster can strike. If the water temp changes drastically and the fish go off the chew you can pollute the system.



Cheers Muzza

Yep the Cloverleaf's are probably pretty good.... and I've used them...

But the last batch I got... had problems with the controller/timer units...

For about the same price you can get aquaculture feeders......

If you are brave you could take a Stanley knife to an automatic cat feeder.

There are a large range of automatic cat feeders on ebay at better prices than fish feeders.

You also need to be able to keep them out of the rain.

Mine is a modified cat feeder and has successfully worked for more than a year.

I've tried a range of pet feeders as well.... and most of them have all the problems outlined above... and usually worse...

Especially with small pellet sizes...

And in my experience, the feeders are not bug, moisture or RAT proof.

I've used the ones like MUS1970 shows when I lived at the old place and would have a neighbor watch things but it was dangerous since the feeder didn't notice temperature changes or fish behavior changes. I did try wiring up a temp sensor that would cut power to the feeder if the temp was out of range but that had all sorts of it's own issues with needing to create more outdoor electronics to protect from bugs and weather.

Now that I'm on the big farm, there always has to be some one around who can pay attention to animals and feeding so we hand feed and record the amount fed on calenders so the old rat chewed feeders are all on the shelf. Yes I actually had rats trying to chew into a couple of the feeders, they made one of the augers so jagged that it came on and managed to kill a rat with it's head in the auger shoot. Talk about a nasty thing to find upon coming home from a trip.