Grässlin Rondomatic 400

I set it all up and watched it in action before in lieu of going on vacation. What I found was that it was gaining about 12 minutes per hour. It must be getting its timing signal from the 50 Hz whereas we use 60 Hz in the US. The math works out, anyway. No problem! I put an appliance timer on the voltage transformer and turn it off at 03:00 AM and turn it back on at 07:00 AM, which syncs everything back up.

The other issue I had to deal with is that the humidity coming off of my tank was causing the food to cake in the feeder. I solved that problem by buying a Thermaltake Mobile Fan II External USB cooling fan, also from Amazon, for about $13. This fan has a speed dial on it. I have it blowing a faint breeze across the feeder to keep the humidity from condensing.

This configuration has worked FLAWLESSLY for about 7 months. I have a 120 gallon tank with a fair number of fish. I feed 4 little "buckets" of food per day, and it has never failed me. I use it every day for the convenience of measured feeding at consistent times of day.

I did a lot of research on automatic feeders and this had the best engineering by far. You can mix any kind of food in the little buckets and it will work. I mix flakes, BB-sized pellets and small sand grain sized food and no problem! The other buckets get algae discs and can fit three of the kind I buy. For some reason, Grasslin decided to not sell them in the US any longer. Other similar feeders have open bottoms and the food rubs against the bottom of the feeder which can grind it up. Not so with the Rondomatic 400.

The only other thing I could do to make this more bulletproof would be to run everything through a UPS to cover times when the electricity goes off, but that almost never happens here.