Current USA Aquachef Auto Fish Feeder
by ADVANCE AQUA TANKS
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List Price: Our Price: $23.60 Availability: Usually ships in 4-5 business days Category: Pet Products See more product details |
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Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of Current USA Aquachef Auto Fish Feeder
Customer Review: FISH FEEDER
Summary: 5 Stars
SEEMS TO WORK GREAT. EASY TO PROGRAM. DOES NOT DISPENSE A LOT OF FOOD SO IF YOU HAVE A LOT OF FISH YOU WOULD HAVE TO PROGROM MORE FEEDINGSCustomer Review: Great Product!
Summary: 5 Stars
Went away for 3 days and the product worked fine. Fed the fish prefectly while I was away.Customer Review: I like it, I like it a lot *
Summary: 4 Stars
My wife and I are big fish lovers and also like to travel, weather permitting. We have three aquariums in our home. A 30 gal, a 20 gal, and a 10 gal fry tank. I work 5 days a week and come weekends we are out of here. Purchased a $40.00 auto feeder from a local Pet supply store and it worked for 20 minutes and quit. They replaced it and the same thing happened so we got our money back and purchased the AquaChef to feed the 30 gallon tank. Set it up and let it feed the fish in the 30 gallon tank for several days to see how it worked. Its hell to program if you don't read the instructions. If you go thru them once step by step and it rather simple. My 12 year old granddaughter programmed it in about 5 minutes the first time but did not understand military time so had it feeding at the wrong time but working very well. I helped her with the time setting and it began feeding flawlessly. With the exception of the fry tank, they all will have one of these on it. Don't let the instructions scare you, my granddaughter didn't. Going to purchase several more by my aquariums and my daughters. I love it !!!
UPDATE:
Mounting the device with the clamping device is rather simple. The C clamp will attach to the front of all aquariums. Do this: place the device close to a lightbulb for 10 minutes to get the plastic more pliable. Not close enough to melt it however. Now remove the rubber suction cup from the inside of the clamp. This should be put away for future use. Use the non-hook side of the velcroe which is just a soft buffer for the glass. Place it where you want the feeder. Now slide the clamp down till it hits the inside of the plastic and gently open the clamp a small amount. It will spring back, no problem. Do not overdue the spreading of the clamp and do it slowely. Now the inside protion will go directly against the glass and the screw can be turned in against the velcroe. Tight and secure. Works extremely well.
Customer Review: Why pay $45 for an Ehiem?
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a very well designed and reliable feeder that has only a few design flaws. With a bit of wear, the battery cover pops off easily resulting in the batteries falling out and the feeder programming getting lost. To prevent this I simply added a bit of tape :) The mounting bracket is also pretty useless unless you have a rimless tank with less than 1/2" glass, but velcro or double sided tape works just as well for mounting. The feeding is also pretty dependent on how full the hopper is if you use flake food. To get more consistent feeding amounts, I would recommend using pellet food. The battery powered operation is also kind of a problem IMO, but you can fix that easily by simply replacing the batteries with NiCad rechargeables and wiring in a 3V solar cell in parallel (edit - MAKE SURE YOU USE A DIODE!)(I don't see why feeders aren't solar powered yet - they're low power machines in high light enviornments and it would only be like a 20 cent increase in manufacturing cost... maybe this will be common in a few years?). The only other problem I can think of is that it's kind of bulky, but that problem probably seems amplified to me considering I'm running it on a 2.5 gallon nano. With these few modifications, you'll get a feeder that's more reliable than an Ehiem with a larger food capacity for half the price. Enjoy!Customer Review: Very good, but has a couple short-comings
Summary: 4 Stars
I like many of the features especially that the feeding is performed by a rotation performed at feeding time rather than a rotation that is continuous until the food finally falls out. It appears to be fairly well made.
I have two complaints that prevent me from scoring it as perfect:
- The programming has one "extra" step of indicating the number of feeding per cycle. If you do not enter anything it defaults to zero and your fish do not get fed. It is very easy to forget this last step if you are not going through step-by-step with the instructions. I think the default should be one feeding per cycle as I suspect this is what most people will desire and would prevent the fish from getting no food.
- Filling the feeder and cleaning the feeder is not easy as it is via a little rubber flap that looks a little fragile but regardless does not provide great access. I have a few Daily Double automatic fish feeders and they are much easier to fill and clean (but not as nice a feeder - The Daily Double is better in ease of programming (no programming involved) and ease of filling/cleaning but has different short-comings).
Of the two type of automatic feeders that I own, this is the better one.