Automatic Feeder Recommendations for one lonely fish

[mushu]

Hi y'all! I currently have a 10-gallon rimless tank that houses one giant male betta and one Amano shrimp. I am looking for a reliable automatic feeder that can dispense a small amount of food for about 2-4 weeks in case I have to go on vacation.

Also how many pellets should I feed a giant betta? I've seen some people say 6-8 pellets 2x a day? 

Does anyone have experience with the Aquarium Coop autofeeder for one fish?

Thank you for your time 🙂

Edited July 1 by mushu

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

Hi @mushu, welcome to the forum! Might be a hard one as most auto feeders seem to be for a tank full of fish. HOWEVER I googled it and Zoo Med has a BettaMatic specifically for Betta. I would probably try that first if I were in your shoes, it's battery powered so I'd have some super fresh batteries on hand to test it at least for a week before you leave.

I would personally be concerned that an auto feeder for a tank with more than one fish might feed too much, but other's might have experience with them. 

[Lennie]

On 6/30/2023 at 11:11 AM, mushu said:

Also how many pellets should I feed a giant betta? I've seen some people say 6-8 pellets 2x a day? 

It is hard to respond to this one. No clue which pellet people take into consideration while making a suggestion.

Because betta pellets do have differing sizes. Some are almost the size of 2x of another.

 

2-4 weeks is kinda big. It would be nicer if you could have someone to come over to feed your fish. I went to a holiday for 3 days and boom, unexpected stuff did occur out of nowhere.  You can put the amount of food in something like a pillbox if anyone could visit. Something like this:

 

[mushu]

On 6/30/2023 at 11:31 AM, xXInkedPhoenixX said:

Hi @mushu, welcome to the forum! Might be a hard one as most auto feeders seem to be for a tank full of fish. HOWEVER I googled it and Zoo Med has a BettaMatic specifically for Betta. I would probably try that first if I were in your shoes, it's battery powered so I'd have some super fresh batteries on hand to test it at least for a week before you leave.

I would personally be concerned that an auto feeder for a tank with more than one fish might feed too much, but other's might have experience with them. 

Thank you for your response! I looked into that one before but everyone has such differing opinions but I'll look into it again! I am also concerned about overfeeding but I've heard you can tape the opening so that less food is dispensed. 

On 6/30/2023 at 1:24 PM, Lennie said:

2-4 weeks is kinda big. It would be nicer if you could have someone to come over to feed your fish. I went to a holiday for 3 days and boom, unexpected stuff did occur out of nowhere.  You can put the amount of food in something like a pillbox if anyone could visit. Something like this:

Hi there! 

Thank you for your response! It is difficult to find someone to feed my fish over the holiday as many people go home for the holiday season so I am going to look into an autofeeder in case no one is available. 

[Lennie]

On 7/1/2023 at 3:32 AM, mushu said:

Hi there! 

Thank you for your response! It is difficult to find someone to feed my fish over the holiday as many people go home for the holiday season so I am going to look into an autofeeder in case no one is available. 

You can check Cory's videos. He usually tapes the part further where auto feeder frops the food to the tank. You will have to play around this for how much food you are gonna feed. This may take a lil time because bettas are very prone to bloating issues and gaining weight. So at the end of whole period with constant overfeeding of auto feeder, you can potentially have a bloated betta, fouled water, or even further worse occasions. Better safe than sorry 👍🏼

 

Cory also mentiones that, consider fish food as a bag of chips. When you open it it is fresh and crispy. When it keeps sitting, it becomes stale. Even exchange of oxygen during feeding times is making it stale.

So in such long holiday, even if you try to go for an auto feeder, the food sitting inside of it will start to go bad. Because autofeeders constantly have a gap open, and the food will be constantly exposed to oxygen. Idk where you live, but summertime also wouldn't help this either.

 

Pets are great but they need serious commitments. This week, it was a 9 day holiday here. I did water changes in all tanks and fed them on saturday. visited my city back on monday for more feedings and BN poop cleaning because they poop A LOT. and on thursday, I returned home again and staying here. Saw 2 guppy males died due to finrot developing out of nowhere in 3 days and developing FAST. 🤷🏼‍♂️ I sacrificed majority of my 9 day holiday for the pets