Automatic feeders

[oscaremmy]

I have to leave my office tanks, most weeks, unattended between Thursday at about 6 p.m. until I return to campus on Monday afternoons. I had bought an automatic feeder (battery powered), which Wal-Mart sells for under $12, and had experimented with the dosage control - this device sits on the tank and twice a day dumps food into the tank.

Now, I set it on its smallest feed setting and tested it through a cycle. To my horror it dumped far too many flakes into my 6-rasbora/4-cory 10g tank - so much so that I quickly took most of it out with a net. Sheesh! I am tempted to just not feed the fish or the Gourami in the 5g over the time I am away. What do you think?

Both tanks are on a light timer switch for 10 hours lighting per day (for the plants), so the plants should continue to thrive. There are snails who can cope with slight overfeeding, but nothing like the amount this device was dumping in!

Do you think the fish will suffer from not being fed for Friday, Saturday and Sunday and most of Monday? If so, I can probably close off some of the tube in the auto-feeder to deliver less food.

I'd appreciate your thoughts, especially if you have had experience with using these feeding devices.

 

[timhook22]

I believe I read somewhere that fish can go for 6 days without food... Just a thought

 

[Rbishop]

Skip the feeder. Most are very unreliable and either clog up or dump.

Fish can easily handle the time frame you are talking about without feeding. You should have no worries.

 

[oscaremmy]

Thanks Tim and Bob.

I saw a TV program where they reported that mice which are not fed much food live significantly longer and have fewer health problems compared with mice fed 'normally'

This is practiced by quite a few humans as part of 'life extension' and is also documented in dogs and other mammals. I see no reason why it should not also work for fish; metabolism will slow where food is not being processed - not only will there be less waste in the tank, but DNA level changes will be slowed, resulting in prolonged life for the fish.

Here's a citation of an article on the subject in The Economist volume 383; April 14 2007 p. 89, 92 :"It is now widely accepted that eating less makes animals live longer, but until now the reason for this has been unclear. In a study recently published in the Journal of Proteome Research, scientists at Imperial College, London, England, used data from an existing study by U.S. dog-food company Purina to try to find an explanation. The original study showed that dogs that were fed less food lived, on average, almost two years longer than dogs that were well fed. According to the more recent study, this may have been because the restricted diet caused a change in the composition of the bacteria in the dogs' gut, which caused a drop in the level of a chemical called choline and in turn restricted the dogs' metabolic rates."

Okay, I am not a fish biologist, so I have no idea (and have no time to find out) if fish guts have the same bacteria. However, they will have some digestive bacteria, for sure, or they would not need a gut. It would be interesting to feed one tank of fish, say, every 3 days, the other daily, similar amounts of food, then see - under controlled conditions in terms of water changes, similar food types, same species, same concentrations, filtration etc...if the underfed fish lived appreciably longer and were less prone to diseases...just a thought. Maybe someone is already doing that somewhere out there?

 

[Ranger]

Oscaremmy,

Way over thinking the fish feeding cycle thing ;-)

I recommend the Rainbow Lifeguard automatic fish feeder. Search around in the net for it, I think they recently discontinued production but there seems to be a retail surplus so you can still get it. I bought one seven years ago and it ran continually day and night for that long before wearing out. Never had any serious problems with clogging or the such. It has 14 individual cells that you can fill with the amount you want to feed so there won’t be any over feeding. Can feed once or twice a day and plugs in. I am setting up a new 75g planted and I went looking for another, just cause the last worked so well, and found an unused dusty boxed one sitting on the back shelf at a local fish store.

Also try Drs Fosters and Smith they have a reasonable selection of other brands.

To me an automatic feeder is a must, if I’m busy I know the fish get fed and I can always feed them some extra if I feel like it. In my opinion ensuring your fish have a regular diet on schedule is more a factor in longevity and health in a captive environment then the possibility of a similar digestive tract to complex mammals. Obesity and all the other toxic crap found in processed dog food might be more of a factor of why dogs lived longer when they weren’t given as much.

Happy fish keeping!

 

[Derringer]

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=3578+4430+16107&pcatid=16107

I have three of those - used them on all of my vacations. I also set my mothers tank up with one that runs 7/365 - I have never had any issues with these feeders - they have proven to be 100% reliable 100% of the time.

As with most things you get what you pay for - buy a cheap feeder and it will clog - buy a nice one and it will do exactly what it says it will do.