# automatic feeder



## Guest (Apr 20, 2004)

Has anybody ever thought about building an automatic feeder for their vivarium? I have an idea in mind that I think would work but I'm very new to this, having never kept dendrobates before. Here's my idea:

Using a solenoid valve such as one of the ones on this page...
https://www.farmtekcatalog.com/lg_displ ... number=193

Couldn't one plumb a pipe through the bottom of the tank and have this valve open for a few minutes, allowing some fruit flies to walk through and into the tank? The system could be find tuned depending on how quickly the FF's come out. Sure there'd be fly guts on the valve's mechanism but I doubt it'd matter that much, this thing doesn't need to seal against water, just flies.

So what do you guys think? The only maintenance that would be required is replacing the culture under the valve with a fresh one.


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## kyle1745 (Feb 15, 2004)

I think it would be a little tough, since it would be hard to tell how many ff's would get out each time.



xplodee said:


> Has anybody ever thought about building an automatic feeder for their vivarium? I have an idea in mind that I think would work but I'm very new to this, having never kept dendrobates before. Here's my idea:
> 
> Using a solenoid valve such as one of the ones on this page...
> https://www.farmtekcatalog.com/lg_displ ... number=193
> ...


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## Guest (Apr 20, 2004)

I think its just as easy to use natural hatching to time feedings. just put a culture with holes big enough for flys to come out and small enough frogs cant get in. Then as they hatch from the culture the frogs eat; a $1(for the culture cup that now has holes in it) auto feeder.


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## Guest (Apr 20, 2004)

Hey there, my brother and I have discussed this a few times. It is a good idea , we run into problems with dusting the flys. To truely be automated you would have to have the flys in a holding "bin" of some sort where they themselves would be able to eat, not a problem. Then they have to be automaticly dusted. This , along with incrementalizing the food dose, is a problem. The dust needs stay bone dry, an almost impossible task if it is exposed to the humidity required for the Darts. It would be great to keep bouncing ideas off of each other though. The problems with feeding are enough to scare some potential hoobiests away, if we could come up with anything to streamline or improve feeding in general, I am in.

Rich Frye


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## Guest (Apr 21, 2004)

frogboy,

Natural hatching is a good idea but ultimately more time intensive than a well engineered auto feeding system, assuming we can come up with something that works.

Rich,

I was thinking about the whole dusting issue as well. Seems like that is definitely one of the most difficult things to implement. Let's think about this and throw some ideas back and forth in order to come up with something. I can think of a few ideas already but they involve way too many valves and I still don't think the dusting method would be effective. At this point my only idea is forcing the flies to walk through a screen with the media: not all that effective.


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## Guest (Apr 21, 2004)

I've been scheming along these lines as well, as everything else on my viv has been automated, this remains the last "hands on" chore. A solenoid device to open a gate, or valve is only part of the required equation, I was thinking of a small compressed air jet to propel the flies into the viv. Even a small fan may be sufficient. Perhaps dropping the flies into a chamber with the vitamin dust, then blowing them in the viv, but then there is the problem of the resuting mess from the dust. Any problem can be solved though.


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## Guest (Apr 21, 2004)

I can think of a couple ways to rig one, but the parts in mind would cost. but if the flies are let out into a new container then shut in there after a min or so then some dust is dispensed on a timer also to cover the flies then droped in the tank. Only problems is first you going to go thru allot of vitimin dust this way and god only knows how much flies are going to come thru each time could range from 5 to 60 per feeding time. Why there may be a way to get this up and going great folks will buy it and be lazy and breeders im sure would love but then we would have no reason to go down every day and check out are frogs. This would mean coming down once a week and finding out your frogs have died or some thing. I think feeding is fun dealing with the ff cultures is a pain but feeding them is easy for me aleast and my frogs do allot after eating good. I look forward to feeding my frogs as gives me a good reason to watch them. Plus my wife cant say much about me going to feed my frogs :twisted:


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## Guest (Apr 21, 2004)

Whoops meant to hit the preview button!!!! *looks for the edit button he loved so much* Dangit, there is a tone of typos in there please forgive me.


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## Ryan (Feb 18, 2004)

I think that thing is great for if you just went on a trip, just to make sure they got something to eat so you dont have to wory if your brother(or whoever) actually fed them for you.


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## pa.walt (Feb 16, 2004)

i think that the feeding should be hands on type of thing just to check how things are going. but the auto feeding is a good thing at times as in use for times one wouldn't be around as in trips.
but the auto feeding is a good idea and if it could be done i think it would be a good idea. my idea would be to just to let the flys out some how without having to take the top off the container and trying to tap them out and keep the others you don't want out in. hope the last comment made sense.


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## Guest (Apr 21, 2004)

i agree with walt, but how about this idea?

I have seen those automatic pet feeders that have a divided bowl that rotates and exposes a section every 24 hours for fresh food (made for cats and dogs) You could maybe set this up with several small cultures or a supply of live flys in each section and then use some sort of vaccum/blower to get the flys in the tank. you might put the whole thing in a tank, but i could just see a frog hanging out in one of the sections when it decides to close up and him getting stuck in there =) that would suck.


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