At FM Aquaponics we have 6 - 800 gal fish tanks with Tilapia and we use 6 - Flexzion Automatic Fish Food Feeders. After about a year we are having some trouble with them as it relates to reliability dispensing food.
I was wondering if anyone else uses automatic feeders and if you do would you recommend a type and brand that serves you well ?
I always recommend against automatic feeders.
Fish food is the main nutrient input of your system this is not something that should be left to chance.
Feeding fish is a great way to spend all of 30 seconds (very low labor cost) and get alot of information about your system. If the water temperature or chemistry is suddenly off the fish will not react normally when fed letting you know something is wrong.
Some times over automation makes problems into disasters we see this issue with overly automated indexing valves and other overly automated solutions to simple low labor problems.
For all of these reasons I always recommend against any kind of automated feeding it costs all of $0.50 cents of labor per day if that to ensure your biggest input is done right.
I agree we visually inspect and care for our fish daily, but I had some guidance that feeding multiple times each day could improve the fish health. Feeding over a12 hour span is our goal.
As long as your maintaining nitrogen levels how often you feed is not as important. They will grow faster if you feed more but if you feed more you can end up with too much nitrates so the nitrates really are the determining factor.