Auto feed live food

[dawguy]

Has anyone tried to put something together that auto feeds live food? I have a fuge and the DT is getting whatever pods that gets sucked up from time to time, but probably not enough for supplementing feedings. I was thinking of something like a brine shrimp hatchery or just some live brine shrimp in a container that has a dosing pump to suck them into the DT on a regular schedule.

 

[mfinn]

A few years ago I had a pair of Banggi Cardinals that were spitting out babies on a regular basis.
I was working at the time and couldn't be home to feed them the 2-3 times during the day as needed.
So I came up with this idea.
It's kind of a crude auto feeder of baby brine.
I took a plastic pop bottle and put a ridgid air line in each side. Connected one side to a air pump that was on a timer. This air line only went into the container enough to put air into it. The other air line went in and down to the bottom of the container and this air line went down into the tank that had the baby cardinals.
In the morning I would fill two of these containers with some newly hatch brine( about 2 cups worth of water and brine shrimp). The timer on one would go off at about 10 am and start filling the container with air pressure which would force the water with the brine shrimp out in the air line going to the baby banggis. Then go off after 5 minutes.
The other containers timer would go off about 1pm feeding the babies again.


I'll bet a dosing pump would have worked much better. But this was done with materials that were laying around or headed for the garbage.

 

[Husker12181]

I came up with an idea that used the exact same principle as Mfinn only I used Oyster feast and cyclopese. The bottle was kept in a mini fridge next to the tank that I also used as a make shift chiller. I later found out that a google search for "mini fridge auto feeder" came up with a bunch of more sophisticated set ups. Of course now you will have to justify a minifridge next to your tank.

Steve

 

[dawguy]

Didn't really think of using a mini fridge. I do have one of those sitting around that can hold a six pack, I'll have to do a little operation on that and make it work. Thanks.

 

[HUNTER01975]

make sure and post pics for others to see and let us know how it goes.

 

[mercenary-grunt]

i believe it was aquanat that created a refugium above her tank. and kept a good supply of pods there. and let gravity feed an almost endless supply of pods.

 

[DTECH07]

This summer I'll be deploying something

 

[rayjay]

IMO, the biggest problem with auto feeding live food is that you need to keep the enrichment value up. To do so means having the enrichment in with the live food until the live food goes to the tank. Unfortunately, the enrichment then goes to the tank as well.
Now if someone comes up with a system that sends the live food to a sieve, with the enriched water going to waste, and then turns the sieve over and washes the live food into the tank, we will have something good.
Then the next hurdle will be to also have something to add enrichment to the live food as needed, so one can go away on holidays.
With seahorses, I certainly don't want any enrichment in the tank, nor would I with my reef tanks.
As for a brine shrimp hatchery, I would NEVER want hatching water to come in contact with any tank water, even if the cysts have been decapped.