EHEIM Everyday Fish Feeder Programmable Automatic Food Dispenser

I've bought two of these, one was around 2014 & the other just a couple of weeks ago. The first one has done well in the past 10+ years I've had it, never an issue. Battery life is so good on it that I don't remember how many times I've changed them but it's been less than five times I would think. Fully filled up, it provides enough food for the fish for about a month with one feeding per day. I just bought a second one to double the capacity to let me be away a little longer when I travel. I haven't tried other automatic fish feeders because this one just works so well as it should.

So about six months ago I switched to automatic feeders (compared to hand feeding) and have bought about 6 of these devices (all for different tanks) as my daily drivers. I believe over this course of time I can list a few pros and cons about this product that I think you should think about.Pros:1) Simplicity - this product is super simple to manage and program. I lost the owners manuals a couple of months ago and honestly with three to four buttons, you don't really need the manual to figure out how to program this device. Also the amount regulator is really easy to adjust (tiny plastic door) depending on the quantity of food you want to distribute. I like to err on the side of less, and just increase the # of revolutions if I feel the fish need more.2) Consistency - this was a huge reason for me to switch to automatic feeders. I am a sucker to over-feeding, and working with mostly nano tanks, I have gone through every problem that too much food can bring. From algae, to smelly water, to fat fish, to being tempted into an extra pinch of food for entertainment's sake, yeah I made all those mistakes and paid for every single one of them. Now I can go weeks without ever touching the fish food which gives me a baseline to adjust the amount if I need to. It also helps me diagnose problems without worrying about the variable of over-feeding as a cause.3) Dependability - been using this device for months without a hitch. Mainly I wanted to use this as a helper during vacations, but I wanted to make sure it would do the job while I was watching it. Sure enough, after a couple of months I never ran into a technical problem with this product. Also the 'dissolving' food option for vacationers seemed like a cheaper route, but the reviews I read about those products,scared me away with putting so many extra chemicals into the water (btw when you are away for multiple weeks you probably aren't going to have someone do water changes).Cons: (yes I still would give this product 5 stars)1) Different types of food - will require a second feeder. I have corys and gouramis in the same tank so I need two of these devices to make sure both get the food they need. For the gouramis I have flake food, but for the corys I have sinking pellets. I have thought about mixing the two together and having just one device, but I realized earlier on that the consistency would seriously fail if I tried this.2) Food of different sizes - could get stuck. So this doesnt really matter for flake food, but if you have bettas and the pellets are of different sizes then you might want to switch to flakes. If you leave the door to tight, the large particles could get stuck and block the food from coming out, but if you open the door too wide, you could end up dropping too much food. Bottom line, unless the pellets are consistently the same size, go for the flake food AND err on the side of not dropping a lot of food.3) Moisture - don't place over an air stone or HOB filter. I learned this the hard way coming back from a one week vacation. I positioned the feeder over an airstone, and the water splashes ended around and inside the container. After a week all the food was rotten and was caked into the feeder (the fish were fasting for quite a few days). Rachel O'leary mentioned this, that if you have a really moist or humid fish room, you shouldn't use fish feeders at all, and I totally agree with her. But keeping the feeder away from my HOB filter and air stone was perfect in keeping all of the food dry for weeks upon weeks.4) Forgetting - to change or re-fill food. This is a great problem to have btw, but I do forget to refill or adjust the programming base on my fish stock at the moment. For example, if I move a whole mess of fish out of a tank and forget to adjust the amount of food dropped, then I can easily run into a problem of over-feeding. While this is clearly an operator's error, a practice not done everyday is easy to forget.Those are my thoughts on this feeder, even with all the cons to keep in mind, I would definitely give this product 5 stars and I will continue to buy only this brand because it works for me. Please note that I have not used any other brand, but I did comb through all the reviews before settling on this device and I think the pros greatly outweigh my concerns. Hope this review helped.

Unit seems solidly built. Feed drum securely slides onto its peg. Programming is very easy with one minor thing that you should read the instructions for. Unit is weighted, and has felt-like feet pads. It comes with a clamp to mount it on the edge of your tank.Batteries inside the packaging should not be used for feeding. Fine to test the product with, and I didn't have any problems with them, but when you need to actually use the product, why trust no-name Chinese batteries that have been sitting who knows how long for in the package? Use some dependable batteries like Duracell or Energizer.Some people complained about having to set the feed amount after setting the feed time, and that it should be automatic that there is at least one feeding. Having to set the feed amount is intentional. It allows you to stop a feeding without having to pull the batteries out of the unit, and let it reset. If you have a feeding and want to disable it, you set the feed amount to none. Otherwise if you set the timer to 00:00, it's going to think you mean to feed at midnight (since it uses military time.)Now here come the negatives.It has an inconsistent feed amount. This is more of the design of this type of unit, than the unit itself. Crushing flakes small help, but it's still going to be inconsistent.The feed dispersal is very wide. The opening you need to use this over should be as wide if not a little wider than the drum itself. Most of the food is dumped when the drum is rotating back up.The feed door is way too easy to open, and hard to set exactly where you want it without a slight bump to it moving it. The door clicks as it closes, but the clicks are much softer when opening, and it's easy to move past where you intended to open it to. The clicks should be equally strong opening as closing.Food gets wet. It appears no matter what, if the feeding slot is over water (and it has to be to work) the food is going to get wet. I had it on my tank lid, with only a little bit over water, and the food got wet, and blocking some of the feeding hole. I came home to two of my fish dead. There was a problem with an ammonia spike with accidental overfeeding when I was testing the unit (I thought I had set the feeder to an appropriate amount, and the fish were getting all of it, but they weren't) so I don't know if it was due to ammonia damage, or not enough food, but if I knew it was not enough food, the rating would be much lower.The company advertises that it has a fan which keeps the food dry. This fan only runs when the unit is feeding. There is no way for it to keep the food dry all the time. It runs for the 10 seconds or so that it takes to feed, 1-4 times a day (depending on how many times you have it set to feed) compared to all the rest of the time it's not running.While not a negative, it would be nice if the unit had an optional AC adaptor to power it, and if there was an option to keep the fan running constantly.There are other automatic feeders out there, but the cheaper ones seem really crappy. This is an OK feeder (would be great if the food dampness problem was fixed) with a few problems. The door can taped, the feed dispersal problem fixed with either using it on the edge of your tank (if you have no lid) or using it over a wide hole. The food dampness problem could be fixed if they had an option to run the fan all the time, or maybe if you place a small fan near your tank pointed at the unit to help keep the evaporated and/or splashed water from building up. Otherwise it kills its intended use.