Eheim dual feeder feeds to much? What food you using?

[banditpowdercoat]

Well, In my DIY nature and love of electronics, I decided to mod my new Dual feeder LOL. Simple I thought, It feeds good amount per cycle, just feeds too darn quick. So, slow the motors down to lengthen the cycle time. It runs till it hits limit switch inside. Soldered a resistor onto motor. Theory is perfectly good. Lower V to motor, slower motor speed, longer feed time. Well, The drive electronics did not like the higher resistance on motor circuit. Fried the motor driver.
Brand new Eheim feeder busted.... Hmmm
Ohh look, a 6v Wall Wart. Wire both motors in series, 6v wall wart slows them down 1/2 speed. Resistor inline, slower yet. Hmm, Apex.. Feed modes, Wall Wart...... Pluged into Apex, a little programming to cycle the outlet for 3 sec at a time. Feeds just a little bit. pauses, feeds some more.... Bandit Likes!!!

So wasted the fancy eheim electronics, just using the body and motors. It much better now for me anyways. I like this feeder as it's large hopper design allows a better food amount for the 3 weeks I am gone. Expensive way to integrate a feeder to the Apex, But will work well I think

[asylumdown]

I just threw out this exact auto-feeder today for the same reason you're talking about. Apparently it really doesn't perform very well with small sized pellets. I also used to use the single chamber eheim, but switched to the dual chamber because I knocked three (yes, three) of the single chamber ones in to my aquarium over the course of a year, frying all of them. I thought the dual chamber was built in a way that would make it less likely to go swimming at a moment's notice.

However, from what I gather now, the auger design really falls apart with the small pellets. A single turn of the auger seems to dump enough food for 40 fish if you're using the small pellets, and in my case, they were gumming up the gear so that one of the two chambers wouldn't complete a full revolution and the little door flap would stay propped open.

If you're feeding small pellets I still think the best feeder available is the single chamber eheim, it's the only one that I've worked with that doesn't dump so much in your tank turns in to an algae soup. I bought two of them yesterday so that I will have a backup when I inevitably knock the one I'm using now in to the tank.

[Lampshade]

I must say, i bought an really cheap ($3 shipped) feeder off of ebay. It's been going everyday for 2 years, 3 feedings a day with 10ish pellets. Still original batteries, I love this thing. I bought 2 just in case it was crap. I gave the second away after a year and it's also had no issues. This is the one here, looks like the price is a bit higher, but it is the model i got.