# Feeding Stations



## Paul B (Aug 4, 2009)

All fish in the sea know how to find their food and in a tank it is even easier for them. The problem is that in the sea Mother Nature supplies food all day, every day. We as humans have other lives and usually don't want to feed our fish continousely. At least I don't. Also some fish are just designed to eat a tiny bit all day because that is just the way their digestive systems were designed. Fish like pipefish and seahorses don't even have a real stomach, just a short tube that acts like a stomach and intestine. These types of fish can not store food as other fish can. Other fish with similar digestive systems are mandarins and any other fish that normally lives on tiny food such as pods. These fish can not even eat a large meal if it were offered to them which is also the reason for their tiny mouths.
For this reason I am a big advocate of feeding stations.
My tank is old and loaded with pods so I really don't have to do this but sometimes a certain fish needs a little help even if the tank is full of pods.
I recently aquired a baby female that is very skinny. I am hoping she matures to mate with my large male.
I hatch and feed live baby brine shrimp to my tank every day and most of the fish eat them, even the larger gobies but this food disappears in a few minutes. Some of it gets skimmed off or caught in powerheads and the rest migrate to the surface because baby brine shrimp are attracted to light.
Most fish that would eat pods, live on the bottom so that food is lost to them.
This feeding station is designed for baby brine shrimp. It is just a plactic container with a mesh over it that barely passes baby brine.
It also has a tube running to the surface so I can fill it with shrimp.
I fill it in the morning and fish just hang around it all day sucking out shrimp.
Many shrimp also escape to be caught by the corals.
About 15 years ago I designed and patented this type of feeding station for adult brine shrimp.
JoM Article: A New Feeding Strategy for Hippocampus sp., and other fishes, by Paul Baldassano (I do not sell these)
I have also used a different type of feeding station to feed moorish Idols.


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## Summer (Oct 3, 2011)

neat!


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## sion342 (Jul 31, 2011)

I like it.


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## Paul B (Aug 4, 2009)

I love this stuff. I modified it a little by adding a better funnel on the top so I can just pour in the baby brine and I added a tiny hole at the bend at the bottom of the acrylic so the air comes out of the tube before it goes in the feeder container. 
I also sealed a couple of lead weights in it just for the heck of it.










I replaced that small funnel at the top with this one. It was a small container of ink for a printer. I just removed the bottom and drilled a hole in the top.


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## Paul B (Aug 4, 2009)

I built the thing mainly for this young skinny female mandarin. Up unitl now she has been afraid to go on top of it and would just suck up the shrimp around the edges but now she hangs out on top of it and sucks out dozens of shrimp. I need her to grow a little so she can mate.


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## Paul B (Aug 4, 2009)

I took a short video of the thing working.


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## Paul B (Aug 4, 2009)

That skinny little female mandarin at the beginning of this thread is now all filled out and bordering on a little chubby. I am hopeful that soon she will grow enough to mate with the large male who so far ignores her. I don't know why, she is cute.


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