I feed mostly pellets to my fish and I use auto feeder (Eheim classic). However, as you know some pellets take time to sink and with return pump running some of the food will be wasted and add unnecessary nutrients to the system while fishes are not getting what they deserve.
I have an Apex Classic. It's probably better than anything out there today but not very friendly with DIY/third party devices and programming this thing is a challenge. Anyway, I was considering purchasing the Apex autofeeder to solve my 10 year old problem but then I thought there could be cheaper way to solve it. As suspected someone has already done it but went great length to do so. I wanted a simple solution and today I finally got it to work!
It's the little black box that triggers "manual" feed button on the Eheim feeder. The box has just a relay that is driven by 12V adapter connected to Apex EB8 power socket. Added an LED to be able to see what Apex is outputing as well.
With a bit of programming with help from Apex programming tutorials (https://www.reef2reef.com/ams/neptune-apex-programming-tutorials-part-7-feed-cycles.715/) I was able to achieve below:
- feed twice a day, at 2pm and 8pm
- turn off return pump, Tunze ATO, skimmer
- wait 1 min
- turn Eheim feeder manual switch on (one rotation)
- wait 5 min
- turn return pump on
- wait 5 min
- turn skimmer on
- wait 30 seconds
- turn Tunze ATO on
So far so good, very happy with this solution!
I have an Apex Classic. It's probably better than anything out there today but not very friendly with DIY/third party devices and programming this thing is a challenge. Anyway, I was considering purchasing the Apex autofeeder to solve my 10 year old problem but then I thought there could be cheaper way to solve it. As suspected someone has already done it but went great length to do so. I wanted a simple solution and today I finally got it to work!
It's the little black box that triggers "manual" feed button on the Eheim feeder. The box has just a relay that is driven by 12V adapter connected to Apex EB8 power socket. Added an LED to be able to see what Apex is outputing as well.
With a bit of programming with help from Apex programming tutorials (https://www.reef2reef.com/ams/neptune-apex-programming-tutorials-part-7-feed-cycles.715/) I was able to achieve below:
- feed twice a day, at 2pm and 8pm
- turn off return pump, Tunze ATO, skimmer
- wait 1 min
- turn Eheim feeder manual switch on (one rotation)
- wait 5 min
- turn return pump on
- wait 5 min
- turn skimmer on
- wait 30 seconds
- turn Tunze ATO on
So far so good, very happy with this solution!