Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Texas Hunter battery advice

My relatively new TH 70 lb fish feeder stopped working, despite battery charging & rated as "good." When I called about the problem, I was told this is often a battery issue. The voltage is fine, and that's what is measured as "good", but the amperage is not measured. Low amps means the motor doesn't work, regardless of voltage. They recommended trying a new battery to see if this is the problem.

Don't know if this will fix it, but I did want to pass this along to my fellow pondmeisters.

I talked to them about the batteries. It seems that they are having battery quality control issues too. I don't know where they are sourced from, but they said they might last a year, or 7 years - it's strictly the luck of the draw. All I can say is that during the winter, turn all the feed stations to "off" if you aren't feeding the fish and leave the battery plugged into the solar charger. If you want to bring it inside, put it on a trickle charger or a battery tender. I had 2 batteries go bad on me and they were slightly over a year old.

I've had batteries go bad before, but never when the display showed them as good. Will try changing batteries to see if it helps.

I bought one of these about 10 years ago and it was worth the money.

https://www.harborfreight.com/100-amp-612v-battery-load-tester-61747.html

Thanks!

Replaced battery today. Bright screen, good charge. Feeder dead as a doornail, no fan noise whatsoever. Will they stand by their product? I've bought at least eight of their feeders over the years, this is the first time one went dead for no apparent reason.

Can you take a timer from another feeder and try it with this new battery feeder? Seems like a timer issue?

anthropic, short the 2 motors one at a time to the battery. If they spin, then it's the controller.

Just curious, but how many feeders do you have on your pond? 8 feeders seems like a lot.

Al, I've had two feeders short out due to flooding. One feeder went bad after lid came off during thunderstorm, drenching feed & motor. And now my latest feeder purchase has stopped for unknown reasons.

I was able to get one of my flooded feeders working again, but only for a couple of weeks.

PS Thanks for suggestion re controller. I'll try replacing it.

Thanks, that's a good idea. Will try!

I had a lid blow open one time but luckily it did not rain enough to ruin anything except a small amount of feed. After that incident I got to putting two small clips in the hold down retainers so they could not be flipped open by a varmint, or more likely what happened is I forgot to latch one. with the clip pins I seem to remember better. No more lids blown open.

Small carabiners.