Hot take: That $200 auto feeder I bought is a total scam for saltwater tanks

I dropped $200 on a fancy automatic feeder for my 90 gallon reef tank and it dumped a whole weeks worth of pellets in one shot while I was on vacation. Came back to water so cloudy I nearly had a heart attack and lost a green star polyp colony to the ammonia spike. Anyone else get burned by one of these things or did I just buy the wrong brand?

2 comments

2 Comments

paul_morgan26d ago

The Eheim feeder I've used for 3 years on my 120 gallon has never misfed once. I set it for two small meals a day and it's been rock solid. The problem is usually the cheap units with bad augers or people not testing them before a trip. For 200 bucks you should have gotten a name brand like the Eheim or the JBL model, not some generic wifi thing. Running it empty for a few days at home would have caught the overfeed issue. I'd honestly blame the brand choice over the whole category being a scam.

the_felix25d ago

My neighbor's cat once ate three days worth of pellets in one sitting.