Freshwater Aquarium Buyers Guide: Automatic and Vacation Feeders

Say you are going on vacation for a couple weeks (in a perfect world, right?) and you don't want to have the neighborhood kid in the house every day, let alone trust him. So how are you going to keep your freshwater fish sufficiently fed? Or you may simply want to cut back on the work involved with keeping your fish.

There are 2 common solutions to this problem; automatic feeders and vacation feeders.

Automatic Feeders

The concept behind automatic feeders is simple; according to a set time, the feeder will rotate releasing a predetermined amount of food. This allows for periodic feeding with little effort required from you. All you have to do is set the intervals and food amounts, and fill it with food when it starts running low.

The advantage automatic feeders have over the dissolving vacation feeders, which will be discussed in the next section, is that they won't leave your water murky, and an automatic feeder can feed your fish much longer.

Recommended Automatic Feeders

AquaChef Automatic Aquarium Fish Feeder

This product from AquaChef is one I've had personal experience with. The setup is easy, and if you do have problems, they have an easy to follow guide.

It can handle all kinds of food as well (flakes, pellets, sticks). The only food I would avoid is frozen or life stuff for obvious reasons. This automatic feeder has more customization than other feeders out there and isn't all that expensive compared to similar products.

The cheapest I could find it for was $28.39 at That Fish Place. You can get more details about it on their site.

Nutramatic 2X Automatic Feeder

This feeder is far more simple compared to the AquaChef product, but it still gets the job done. This product simply spins every 12 hours releasing food, depending on how far you open the food gate, so it is adjustable in that sense.

I'd even go as far as to say that this product is equally as effective as the above product, you just don't get as much customization. But again, it gets the job done.

This is for people looking for a cheap and easy solution. You can pick this item up for just under $20 at That Fish Place.

Automatic Feeders on Ebay

Vacation Feeders

These have slowly lost popularity over the years since automatic feeders have improved so much. None the less, vacation feeders still have their place. If you are going to be out for the weekend, and you want to make sure your fish are fed, just drop in a 2 day vacation feeder. Its understandable why you wouldn't want to invest $20-$30 in an automatic feeder.

Vacation feeders slowly dissolve with time, releasing food from time to time. The downside is that the disolved "white stuff" needs to go somewhere. It usually ends up in the tank. It's not harmful, just makes the water temporarily murky.

Vacation feeders are sold based on the time period they are supposed to last for. The shortest being a day or 2, all the way up to 14 days I believe. Though it wouldn't surprise me if they had ones that could last even longer.

Again, I recommend That Fish Place. They have excellent service and I've never had any problems with them.

I hope this Buying Guide was useful, since it is the first one, I'm sure there can be improvements made. As always feel free to leave a comment, to let me know what you think could be better, or what you would like to see.