JBL AutoFood Automatic Fish Feeder - White

JBL AutoFood Automatic Fish Feeder - White is JBL's automatic feeder for aquarium fish, in the white casing.

Key Features

• Up to four feeds a day, each set separately: Four feeds with their own portion sizes, which matters because small and often is how most aquarium fish are built to eat rather than one large meal a day.
• 125 ml, or 375 ml with a tin on top: The hopper holds 125 ml. Screw a 250 ml JBL ProNovo food tin onto the adapter ring and it carries 375 ml, which covers a long absence or a heavily stocked tank without refilling.
• Air connection to keep the food dry: A connector takes a line from a small air pump and keeps dry air moving through the hopper. That is the difference between a feeder that works for years and one that jams in a humid tank, and it is the most useful thing on the unit.
• Mounts anywhere along the tank: Suction cup or clamp holder, and the body turns through 360 degrees on its mount, so the outlet can be aimed out over the water instead of at the rim.
• Manual switch as well as the timer: An on and off switch gives a feed on demand, so it is useful day to day and not only while you are away.
• White casing: The only difference between this and the black version is the colour of the housing. White suits a white or light coloured hood and cabinet, and shows less dust.

Before You Go Away

• Run it for a full week while you are at home. This matters more than anything else on this page: watch the portion it actually drops, watch whether the fish clear it, and adjust it before you leave rather than after.
• Set the portions smaller than you would feed by hand. Fish come through a fortnight of light feeding far better than they come through one overdose in a tank with nobody there to siphon it out.
• Change the batteries before a trip rather than when they fail. A feeder on dying cells can under-dose or stop altogether.
• Do a water change and service the filter a few days before you travel rather than the night before, so the tank is settled when you go.
• Put the lights on a timer as well, and tell whoever holds your keys where the mains switch is.
• For a weekend, adult fish in an established tank do not need feeding at all, and feeding nothing is safer than feeding wrong. A feeder earns its place from about a week upwards, and with fry or very small fish from the first day.
• Beyond a couple of weeks, or on any tank holding something delicate, somebody who can actually look at the water beats any machine.

What It Will And Will Not Feed

• Free flowing granules from 1 to 3 mm, which is what JBL specify. Within that size it is reliable.
• Flake does not work in it. Flake bridges in the hopper, comes out in clumps, and then comes out as nothing at all.
• Wafers, tablets, sticks and anything over 3 mm will not pass through the drum.
• Freeze dried food swells as it takes up moisture and jams the mechanism. Keep that for hand feeding.
• If your fish are currently on flake, move them onto a granule of the right size a week or two before you rely on the feeder, so you know they will actually take it. Finding out while you are away is too late.

Keeping The Food Dry

• Damp food is why automatic feeders fail. Granules draw moisture up out of the tank, swell inside the drum and jam it, and a jammed feeder either delivers nothing or tips the lot in at once.
• Run a line from a small air pump to the air connection. It keeps dry air moving through the hopper and is the single thing that most extends a feeder's working life.
• Mount it well clear of the water surface and away from the filter outflow, so it is not sitting in spray or in the warmest, wettest air above the tank.
• Only fill it with what will be used within a few weeks. Dry food starts losing its vitamins once it is opened, and a hopper filled for the year is stale long before the year is out.
• Look at the drum and give it a tap each time you refill. Caked food is far easier to deal with before it matters than after.

Good To Know

• The white and the black are the same feeder in two casings, at the same price. Pick whichever is less visible on your tank.
• Check with us whether batteries are supplied with this version before you order, and have three AA cells to hand either way.
• There is also a newer ProNovo version of this feeder that comes with the adapter ring for JBL ProNovo 250 ml food tins. Ask us which suits the food you use.
• Do not leave a tank that is still cycling on an automatic feeder. A new tank cannot process waste from food that nobody is watching.
• Rinse the hopper and the drum in warm water and dry them thoroughly between different foods. Never use detergent on anything that drops food into a tank.