[BahaTanju] sent in this oh so simple fish feeder. It’s a mechanical light timer with a simple dispensing bottle mounted to the rotating time wheel. As the timer rotates, food is dispensed and the aquarium light is activated. If you have bigger fish, you could adapt this to work on a solenoid and use a timer with multiple on/off settings.
17 thoughts on “Simple Fish Feeder”
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This is just one of those hacks where you smack yourself upside the head and go “WHY DIDNT I THINK OF THAT!?” Brilliant.
Or you smack yourself upside the head at Walmart when you see said item on the shelf. I have exactly this design feeding my single koi twice a day except for one difference: the engine is a battery powered wall clock movement.
Nice work Doc Brown.
I’m not really sure I’d want to go that far unless I wasn’t going to be around for a few days. I like feeding them and watching them eat so I think this may take away from that part of the experience in having fish.
Unless you maybe hooked it up to a webcam and remote connection of somekind so you could feed and watch whenever where ever.
It’s nice to see the /actual/ hacks every once in awhile. If the picture isn’t black and white with the Polaroid border, I don’t even read the articles anymore.
Also, cool hack. My friend’s dad did the same type of thing to feed his pigs, he took a metal wheel thing (the tire sits on? Not sure what its called.) and welded about 6 walls inside it, so that it was built like a waterwheel, and he attached it to an older electric motor. After some adjustments, it would load the proper amount of food and dispense it at certain intervals.
love it! Nice job keeping it simple. it could be improved and made more complicated but why?
Nice :)
sweeeeet
How can I link to this site on my blog?
Cool I’m going to start on this soon so I can feed my fish while I’m on vacation.
How very cool! Why didnt i tihnk of that, going to try and rig something similar up here.
Hi all… You may want to check out this video and demo if you want to see another fish tank feeder project. It does the feeding and a whole lot more. Doesn’t require a PC on all the time and you can basically access/control your tank via PC or iPhone over the internet. Its at: http://tinyurl.com/tankvideo Enjoy…
Speaking of fishing. Check this site out.
rad
I tried this today, I will be traveling for the holidays and need to keep my fish fed for 8 days. However, if you want to buy an analog timer don’t expect them to be in stock around christmas!!! i had to get one with a small dial and hopefully it works out.
Nice, but i do not get one thing – the wheel rotates slowly, doesn’t all the food just fall into the water at once?
The straw acts as a baffle and only allows one shot – much the same as the sugar dispensers that used to be on cafe tables (at least here in the UK in my youth)if you image google ‘cafe sugar dispenser’ you will see the kind of thing if you are not familiar with them
Awesome! Just built this for our upcoming week vacation. No more fish-sitters! Yay!