Food Floats When Using Nutramatic 2X Feeder

[stgamba]

:x
I am planning a two week vacation and thought I could use the Nutramatic 2X Feeder for my fish. The problem is the food floats and my tangs do not eat food on the surface. When I feed manually, I release the food in a submerged net about 12" below the water surface. This keeps most of the food under the surface and some of it sinks to the bottom where they like to feed.

I use TetraMarine Marine Granules and VibraGro Small Pellet.

Is my only option to buy larger granules or pellets? I'm sure the surface tension of the water prevents the food from sinking when dropped above the surface. Because of this, I'm not sure that any larger sized food will sink when using the automatic feeder.

Please tell me what works in this situation.

92 gal corner tank
Coral Beauty Angelfish
Kole Yellow Eye Tang
Yellow Tang
Powder Blue Tang
Royal Gramma
Blue Damsel
live rock

2 Ocellaris Clownfish[/b]

 

[Atari]

One idea is to create more surface agitation.. if there's plenty of activity then the surface will break often and food will pass through. I'm sure your food sinks if you use your fingers to splash the water around a bit? Same idea, but use a PH pointed towards the surface instead.

BTW, Welcome to Aquarium Advice

 

[stgamba]

Thanks. I'll move my powerhead higher.

 

[Atari]

Have you arranged for water top-offs? That's probably the most important thing because as the water evaporates it affects the sg.

 

[stgamba]

No and that's a problem. I need to add about a quart of water a week or my sump pump starts to suck air. If I overfill the sump, the water line will be well within the bio balls and I think that's a problem also. If I ever had a power failure, the sump will overflow.

 

[Atari]

Ouch, well that's probably a good topic to start another thread with. I'm not really familiar with water top-off systems so I can't help you there.