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.
