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I did a 5-day test; I removed the foil, dropped the tray of food in the tank; the fish all instantly attacked it in a feeding frenzy (I hadn't fed them yet). Went out the first day, came back, noted that the fish were satiated, were only pecking at it occasionally. By this time, the agar had swelled a little, making a film of white on the food block. This might be what some reviews (here and for TetraVacation) are calling "mold". It's not mold, it's agar; inert as far as the fish and tank water are concerned.
Then I re-read the reviews, and realized that an extra comma in the instructions made me miss the fact that I was actually supposed to remove the tray from the food as well. Took the tray with food out of the tank, flipped it over, and the food block fell right out -soaking in water had loosened it. (The only reason I can see to remove the tray is to prevent it from being flipped over by a bottom feeder; that would make the food inaccessible, as one reviewer noted.)
As of this writing, it's 5 days into the test. Most of the food block is left, I still see the fish eating it now and then, their bellies look full, they're pooping as usual, and they're acting normal. The tank water has never been better; ph 7.0, ammonia, nitrites and nitrates all zero. I haven't been feeding them anything else during this time.
So, it looks like this thing works. Reading these reviews got me so paranoid that I was afraid to try it. But as far as I can tell, many of the reviews are misleading -either they didn't remove the tray, don't know what agar is, don't test or maintain their tank water quality, or maybe overfeed their fish in the first place. I'll reserve the possibility that maybe only guppies like this stuff, and other fish don't -no way for me to test for that.
10 Gal tank of about 10 guppies, ranging in age from fry to adult, hang-on-tank filter pulling through undergravel filter (using the undergravel as a prefilter and biomass). Heater set at around 77 deg F.
Recommendations for the folks who make Tetra: You've got a good product here, and I'd like to keep using it. It would be a shame to see it not sell well; as far as I can tell, it's much better than the plaster blocks. Here's what I'd do:
(1) Rewrite the sentence "Remove foil seal, and tray, drop...". It's too easy to misread that. Try instead something like: "Remove foil seal, remove feeding block from tray, then drop..." Maybe add a hint about soaking the tray in water if it's difficult to remove.
(2) Add a sentence about the agar, so people know what to expect in appearance.
(3) Add a whole paragraph about water quality and temperature. I think some of your critics might be getting poor results because they're trying to leave their fish untended in an unfiltered bowl, or in a tank that is poorly maintained.
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