My little drippers stink!! :mad:

[BIGGUN]

Every single time I put water in my Little Drippers I have to mess with the valves to get them to start dripping. It is VERY annoying. My misting system fills my display dripper to make it "automatic". But it doesn't work very well when you have to adjust it every time.

Am I the only one who has this problem? I haven't read about this before yet all three of mine do this.

Thanks,
Kevin

 

[nightcrawler]

i dont have a little dripper. i have a leftover food tub that i use for a dripper. i heated up a pin and stuck it in the bottom of it to make a hole and it drips great. the only problems ive had was the hole closing, and i just put a pin threw it once a week, not heated, and it works fine. you might have to concider going down a notch with technology.
just my experience.

 

[Justin Carl]

you get gunk inside your dripper, so you need to clean them out once a week.
Also try blowing into the valve to unclog it.
Hope that works!

 

[Brad Ramsey]

I occasionally have to "fiddle" with the valves on my drippers.
It's never more than a few seconds of my time though.
I have a bit more trouble with them if they are set to drip too slow.
For the most part I am happy with them ... it's not much trouble to correct and you have the benefit of a moving water source for most of, if not the entire day.
When one is not dripping to my satisfaction: I turn it to drip really fast, then slowly bring it back to the desired rate.

-Brad

 

[BIGGUN]

They've done it since the first day.

I keep the dripper to the side of the cage so the pinhole container won't work without having it on top of the cage. If I need to do that I'll need to find something decorative to conceal the cup.

Thanks for the input.

Kevin

 

[JimNPHX]

Hey Kevin: You are not the only one. I have two and they both are a pain, which is why I do not use them. I have my cages set up high with the drippers on top. I hate having to get a stool to mess with those things.

I would deal with it if that was the only source for drinking, but I have a misting system also and my chams get enough that way.

Jim

 

[BIGGUN]

I think I'm gonna have to move all the chams into the living room......
My wife's gonna LOVE that. I just didn't want to have to take the reef tank down. But if I move them I can run the misting system on all of the cages.

Kevin

 

[lele]

my dripper eventually cracked from dropping it too many times (never screwed the top on all the way - I found THAT to be a pain) so I just use the valve from it in a gladware container. I set the container on top of the strip light and the heat seems to help maintain the flow and the distance from the screen keeps it from puddling on it. Also keeps it at a nice temp for Cy.

I never fill it up all the way and I have never had a problem with anything building up in it (never cleaned it ). I use only bottled water as our well is a shallow (20') dug well and we have occasional water issues, so that may help. I take that back, I do run very hot water and some diluted Nolvasan (comparable) thru it when I think of it. This valve is from my original dripper that goes back to 2003. I have been using it with the gladware set up for a couple years. I have to mess with valve adjustment a bit as the level of water changes but I think that is to be expected. When it gets real low I place a rock on the top and the pressure keeps it dripping. Cy sits in his corner and laps it up

Btw, I think you can buy the valves at HD or Lowes

 

[AFH]

I've had the same problems with drippers. They don't clog as easy if you use filtered or drinking water as opposed to tap water. There's minerals in tap water that clog up the valve. Also, it depends on how much water is in there. The more water, the more pressure, when it gets low, it may not be enough. What I do is when it stops up, I just turn it on full and then turn it back till it has the drip I want. It's not too bad for a cage or two.

I went ahead and set up an automatic misting system since I got tired of adjusting 8 drippers all the time.

 

[OldChamKeeper]

The problems I had with the drippers was when the container was full it would drip too fast, after adjusting it to drip slowly the next problem would be with there not being enoug water pressure for the rest to drip. Then I'd have to re-adjust the valve.

I went with a misting system. next to one of the nozzles I hung a piece of aquairum tubing using a paper clip. The mist hits the tube and slides down it forming a drop. The quads can go anywhere for water but they seem to really just head over to the tube now.