Neptune Auto Feeding System (AFS) questions

[SkyShark]

What has your experience been like with this product? I'm trying to automate as much as I can for vacations and I am always worried about a tank sitter overfeeding or not being able to stop by frequently enough.
I worry that the food that is added by the AFS will be quickly swept into the overflow. Do you have it drop the food into a feeding ring? I don't really want to have the return pump turn off when it feeds, so would this be a good alternative?

 

[sethsolomon]

I use a 2 little fishies food ring I got at GWA and it works pretty well. I am working on an adapter so I can have my afs on the center brace of the tank instead of the back of the tank.

 

[FishTV]

I have mine drop above my return nozzle, that pushes most of it towards my vortech. I don't get a lot of floaters, but the small amount I do have floating tend to hover above the mp40 until it starts to sink, or get sucked down. The feeding frenzy is usually over pretty quick, no food left for the overflow.

 

[jahmic]

I have mine drop above my return nozzle, that pushes most of it towards my vortech. I don't get a lot of floaters, but the small amount I do have floating tend to hover above the mp40 until it starts to sink, or get sucked down. The feeding frenzy is usually over pretty quick, no food left for the overflow.

+1 I place the feeder above my return nozzle. Some of it does end up in the overflow, but it's a small amount. I use pellets though...flakes don't escape the overflow quite as easily.

 

[zombie]

None of it will get sucked into the overflow if you program it to turn the return off 1 minute prior to the rotation and leave it off for 5-10 minutes after the food drops.

You can also use gravity to your advantage. If pellet food drops 1ft or more, it will break the surface tension and wont float.

 

[jahmic]

Agree on the height recommendation...I do the same.

I used to cycle the return with feedings, but stopped. The possibility of the return pump seizing for some reason when it kicked back on was too difficult to ignore. All of the snail guards and pump "reliability" in the world can't stop Murphy's Law.

 

[SkyShark]

hmm... this is tricky. It's a small tank, so I don't a ton of room to work with. I think i'll try and borrow one from someone before I buy it so I can make sure I am able to mount it somewhere. Thanks guys.

 

[SynDen]

i have mine i bought at macna and still havent even taken it out of the box. Although mainly since I cant get my anthias to eat anything that resembles a pellet. but if you want to borrow it for a few to see if it will fit, you are welcome to.

 

[SkyShark]

i have mine i bought at macna and still havent even taken it out of the box. Although mainly since I cant get my anthias to eat anything that resembles a pellet. but if you want to borrow it for a few to see if it will fit, you are welcome to.

haha. Thanks for the offer, I will take you up on that! I'll shoot you a pm.

 

[ayaws]

I'm very close to pulling the trigger on an AFS other than my same problem of the Anthias (male/female squareback) refusing to eat anything like pellets or flakes. At this point I have a retired and phenomenally reliable neighbor who used to have a tank feed while we're away. She's meticulous at taking notes and following them and even checks out the basement equipment room for me. I run an APEX and shut off the return when feeding. So far so good (and I keep a backup pump on hand at all times.)

 

[jahmic]

Try mixing in some pellets with frozen food and working the pellets into their diet. Before they all murdered each other and the last one jumped ...I coaxed my anthias into eating pellets my mixing a small amount into their mysis and frozen cyclop-eeze along with some garlic guard. They started off just spitting the pellets out...but I slowly increased the amount of pellets in the mix and just made sure they were saturated in the frozen food mix long enough that they fooled the anthias into eating them. They were eating strictly pellets out of the AFS within a month or so.

Outsmart your fish

 

[ayaws]

Thanks for the advice! I'll give that a shot. Which pellets (out of curiosity) were you feeding?

I'm very tempted to buy your WXM by the way.

 

[jahmic]

I use the New Life Spectrum (NLS) marine fish formula. It's a 1mm pellet size.

 

[ayaws]

Thanks! I'll give that a go.