by Dr_DBW

Having fish like Anthias means regular feeding. What do you do if you are away for most of the day? Which can certainly be the case for many people. You can get dry food automatic feeders, but fish like Anthias rarely take that, so I had to come up with some solution to the problem. And it is a pretty good one, if I may say so myself ;-)

It relies on an inverted, stiff plastic bottle, an airpump and a digital timer. The plastic bottle holds the food, in water, the timer turns the airpump on and the airpump forces air into the bottle, thereby forcing the water out the bottom of the bottle. See the diagram below.

Automatic feeder diagram.

The food needs to be small enough to fit through the tubing used. So in this case it is perfect for things like adult brine shrimp, baby brine shrimp, mysis shrimp, blood worm, daphnia and fine mixed frozen food. These are the types of foods that I place in it. In the morning I put the frozen food in (after giving the bottle a good rinse out with hot water), fill the bottle up with water and leave it. It is only good for a single day, since the food will start to go foul after a day.

The manner in which I made the inlet/outlet for the bottle isn't very neat or well done, but it does the job. When I get around to it, or think about it, I will do a better job. Anyway, used two short length of rigid airline, drilled two holes through the lid, inserted them through and glued it in place. I think I used the hot melt glue. The green piece of plastic in the image below as used to keep the two tubes apart and add a bit more strength. As I said, pretty rough.

Base/top of the bottle.

I made a bracket to hold the bottle in using a square piece of wood with a hole through it. The hole is just smaller than the dimeter of the bottle, so that it sits in there. The wood was then attached to the top of the open top hood, see image below.

Bottle in position above the tank, in the hood.

This is the digital timer that was used. It is set to a single one minute interval during the day for it to come on and expell the water and food that is in the bottle. If the airpump is small enough or an airline clamp is used on the airline to reduce the air flow further then it is possible to get more than one dosing per bottle fill.

Digital time used for automatic feeder.

To put the food out into the fast flow from a pump outlet I also made a roughly L shaped length of thin acrylic tubing, bent by heating. The airline fits snuggly inside this tube and the tube is cable tied to the water circulation piping. It can be seen in the below image.

Outlet of atomatic feeder, clear acrylic tube to the immediate right of the horizontal PVC pipe.

The airpump should be placed above the water level in the bottle or install a good check valve. Otherwise can end up with some problems of water flowing back into the airpump.

Small airpump used, placed above the water level.

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