Darren is a customer of our’s at Paddock Farm, so when he came in to ask for help choosing an automatic feeder, we gave him an Eheim 3582 Twin Automatic Feeder to take a look at.  Here’s Darren’s thoughts on the product and his experience using it.

First impressions of the fish feeder were good.  It had a clever design that allowed both flake and pellet to be fed to my Tanganyika aquarium fish.

Batteries were supplied and were easily installed.  Setting the amount of food to come out of the feeder was easily done over a container by holding different buttons down (one for each tube).  I eventually settled on 3 turns for the flake and 1 for the pellet.  The display on the feeder was not clear at first, where there was three feeds per day (the left side for the left feeder etc) Left and right feeders could have been displayed on the LCD display to clear this up.

Once set up, the feeder was positioned over the tank, but I had to slide the lid half on and half off, as the feeder did not come with any type of clip for the side of the tank which i was very surprised at.  So it was balanced at the edge of my lid as there was nowhere else to put it!

I went on holiday for 10 days, and no fish had died, which I was very pleased with so the feeder did its job!  There was however one problem that hadn’t been taken into account when designing the feeder; the condensation build-up.  If used with a tropical/warm tank the condensation will inevitably build up, which it did under the delivery tubes.  On my return i did find wet food stuck to the edges, which could have prevented any further food coming out. I’m not sure when this occurred, and possibly didn’t affect it when i was away, but for longer periods might be an issue.

Overall I’m pleased with the product, but does need a clip for the side of the tank or a funnel shoot to direct the food to a specific area of the tank.

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