DIY Elevated Feeding Station

[redfishbluefish]

I use Eheim Everyday Fish Feeders for when we travel. Once I got the tank with the Euro Bracing, the feeder simply sat on one of the braces with a feeding ring below:

Worked great until one feeder outright died all together and with the replacement, the display went funky on me:

I came to the conclusion that being so close to the water level with popping water bubbles, they got the units wet and eventually caused them to die.

To solve this problem I purchased yet another feeder and simply mounted the feeder up high on a small wood cross brace with the feeding ring below:

With this arrangement, ran into two issues:

1. Some food dropping that high ended up on the EuroBrace
2. Don't ask me how, but Astraea snails would get on the feeding ring and partially sink it down making it ineffective. This happened twice.

I was simply living with this arrangement and putting up with the issues until someone mentioned the Eheim Feeding Station:

What a great idea and simple design and reasonably priced at ca $17. This would solve one of my issues, but being this short would not work mounted up so high. The "tube" portion needs to be underwater to allow the food to sink.

So here's my DIY solution.....using a thin wall 3 inch pipe and a scrap piece of 1/2 acrylic I made a high feeding station:

The feeder would sit on the acrylic shelf and dump the food down the pipe, which would terminate an inch or so below the water. Here I am holding it in place:

Now I just need to remove the feeding ring and redo the bracing for the shelf portions.....which is going to be a pain. I'll need to pull out the lights and remove the canopy to put screws into the wood bracing......or maybe directly into the 1/2 acrylic....haven't decided yet.

 

[blaxsun]

You could always mount the feeding station to the brace?

 

[CoralB]

What material is the pipe made of???

 

[redfishbluefish]

You could always mount the feeding station to the brace?

Assuming you're talking about mounting the shelf to the angled brace used to hold the feeder clamp in the original elevated application? The problem with that is it's not level....sloppy job when I first put it in, and I'm concerned the cantilever of the shelf along with the 12 inches of pipe is just sticking too far out....too much weight, along with the feeder I'm guessing I could top brace the cantilever, but that still would require pulling the canopy off to get screws into that brace.

 

[redfishbluefish]

What material is the pipe made of???

The pipe is ASTM D2729 sewer drain pipe made of PVC. It's thin walled compaired to schedule 40 PVC.

 

[blaxsun]

Assuming you're talking about mounting the shelf to the angled brace used to hold the feeder clamp in the original elevated application? The problem with that is it's not level....sloppy job when I first put it in, and I'm concerned the cantilever of the shelf along with the 12 inches of pipe is just sticking too far out....too much weight, along with the feeder I'm guessing I could top brace the cantilever, but that still would require pulling the canopy off to get screws into that brace.

I meant the glass brace, actually. Having it up in the corner has to be a major PITA for refilling. But I do agree about the splashing aspect (the jackals I have in my tank have no manners whatsoever).

 

[redfishbluefish]

The DIY Elevated Feeding station installed by drilling directly into the 1/2 inch acrylic and using 1" SS screws.

The Eheim Everyday Feeder sits on the shelf and dumps food down the pipe. Works great, and no more food ending up on the Eurobraces, and no more Astraea snails sinking the feeding ring, and hopefully sitting up high enough that splashed water doesn't kill the electronics! I'm happy.

 

[CoralB]

The pipe is ASTM D2729 sewer drain pipe made of PVC. It's thin walled compaired to schedule 40 PVC.

Was it used ? The inside looks kinda bumpy not smooth . Is the material on inside reef safe ???

 

[jsker]

Nice work Paul, great hand model

 

[Sean Clark]

I use my auto feeder over the return pump in my sump to alleviate some of these same issues. I have not tried this with flake though which I believe is what you are feeding.

 

[BanjoBandito]

I’ll never trust an auto feeder. Lol.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Cool idea!

 

[redfishbluefish]

Was it used ? The inside looks kinda bumpy not smooth . Is the material on inside reef safe ???

Was it used.....not really. The gas company came through behind the back of my property a number of years ago and put up signs on 3 inch pipe.

I can only assume they cut off a couple feet of this pipe and threw in in the underbrush. It sat in the underbrush for years, and when the little lightbulb went off in my head, I retrieved this piece of pipe and used it.

I agree, it's not the prettiest pipe on the inside, but will not be an issue. It's been used a couple days and the food (flakes) just slide right down into the water.

Is it safe....yes. It is PVC, the same stuff on the plumbing going down to my sump.