AquaChef Automatic Aquarium Fish Feeder 3 in x 5 14 in x 3 in
Monday, October 5th, 2009AquaChef Automatic Aquarium Fish Feeder 3 in x 5 14 in x 3 in
Going out of town? Don’t rely on out-of-date feeding blocks when you can use the AquaChef. It’s easy to give your fish up to eight feedings a day of flake, pellet, or crumbled food. Schedule single feedings for up to four different times, use the double-feeding feature to make any of those four two feedings, sixty seconds apart, or manually override the settings if you decide to give one more feeding yourself. The AquaChef also has an adjustable hatch to control the amount of food fed and to serve as a mixing stir bar to make sure the food isn’t clumped, just like you would. The moisture-resistant hopper is easy to clean and fill. Why let your fish starve when they can have their very own AquaChef?
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars Very good, but has a couple short-comings
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.
5 Stars Great Item- I suggest buying!
Alot of people complain about how this is difficult to program, for many it may be, but if your relatively good with computers you shouldn’t have any problem figuring it out quickly! As far as performance goes, it only lasts as long as the batteries do. So make sure you have powerful enough batteries. Some you can buy really really cheap and they only last a week or 2 max. like 99 cents for 8 batteries. but I bought some 2 for a dollar and they have been up for over a month and doing great.- I have my feeder feed my two clownfish- and firefish a small amount twice a day!- and it works great!- I just feed them some frozen food with that every other day.
Overall I definitely recommend this feeder- very reliable, very cheap and very customizable.
Just make sure you have it on the right setting for amount of feeding- one time I had it on max instead of min and there was accidentally a dump full of food in tank- not good! -Also test feed it a few times in your hand to make sure it’s the right amount that you want.
1 Star Starving fish
I purchased this feeder so my fish would not go hungry while I was on vacation. The time and the feedings are set using a 24h clock, so it’s pretty hard to mess up. I did a trial run and everything seemed to be working fine. When I got back from vacation, my fish were not looking so hot. I fed them and they ate voraciously which got me wondering if the feeder was actually working. So I set my iphone alarm for 10:00 am and watched the feeder to see if it was dispensing food. Nothing. Then I set it for 11:00 am, and watched. Still nothing. So somewhere during the time I was gone, this feeder just quit working. Batteries are fine, clock is set right and so is the feeding time.
Maybe it will work for you, but it didn’t work for me.
4 Stars Bulky but good
This unit is a LOT bigger than it looks. Putting that aside, the timer/clock gains about 2 minutes a month but thats not of concern to me. Easy to adjust outpput from flake food to pellets but a pain to fill. The opening is on the inside of the drum but is awkward and small. If you use a funnel, the task is much easier. Hard to beat the price though, even with its drawbacks. The other feeder I use (Marineland) is much smaller, easier to fill and holds about the same amount of food but isn’t as easy to adjust output from pellets to flakes as this one is. The other unit costs a bit more but given the pros vs cons, they come out pretty much even. Both have about the same battery lifespan which is about a year between changes. If price isn’t a factor, I would choose another feeder but if on a tight budget, you can’t go wrong here.
5 Stars I can’t gush enough about this feeder!!
This feeder is Awesome! I figured out how to time it..that took a bit of time being that I am kind of slow. *hint* when youre up to the part where you’re pressing “mode” button to go to the different time values such as minutes or hours, you’ll see lastly the tiny number above it blinking. That number indicated the number of feedings so far (i.e. 1st feeding, 2nd feeding of the day, 3rd feeding, etc.) Anyway, that little number blinks. DON’T IGNORE THE LITTLE BLINKING NUMBER, this is IMPORTANT, it’s the one factor that actually decides if the feeder will function at all, without entering a value here, it won’t function. Press adjust once then you see 1 bar next to the tiny number blinking. This indicated the feeder will revolve once. Hit adjust again and that it will make it revolve twice when you feeds. That’s the only thing that confused me at first. But I LOVE this thing. It fed my fish flawlessly for my 2 week vacation and continued to do so 2 weeks after i got home and I shut it off. My salt water wish looked happy and well nourished when I arried home, and I was so nervous for them when I left as I never used this kind of feeder or left my fish for that long alone. But the feeder worked %100, no need to fear. AWESOME!
