Hi all,

I've just noticed after a little over a year, (too worried about other issues), that when I feed my fish the food swirls around and heads straight for the filter.
This got me to thinking about how much I'm probably feeding the filter and whether or not the excel I'm dosing is actually helping the plants or just going right into my filter.
Any thoughts? Does anyone shut their filter off to either feed or dose ferts? if so for how long?
Thanks!

I wouldn't worry about ferts/excel, they will go straight through the filter.
Feeding, you could pause the filter for a minute or so if you wanted.
I used to pause a power head because it would scatter food everywhere, now my tiger barbs are a bit bigger, food barely sinks more than an inch before it is devoured....

Used to shut my filter's off when feeding but have a disturbing habit of forgetting to turn them back on.
Old timer's disease I guess.

+1!
That's the main reason I stopped doing it....

after few times forgetting to turn filter back on after feeding this is a big 'no' to me now

I actually disperse my flake food into the filter outflow. .. seems more natural for it to be in the water column for my tetras than on the surface. Amy thing that is missed the cherry shrimp get

Does anyone automate this with an apex? Would that cause an issue when it is restarted? Any wear and tear on the filter due to on and off?

I do this too. It disperses the food all around the tank so that all of the fish have a chance to eat.

I always aim my ferts to the intake of the filter. Helps to disperse the ferts better.
I do turn off the filter for feeding the fish. The filter makes the food sink to fast. I want to make sure the food doesn't end up sitting on the substrate.

I literally have a small funnel that feeds into the top of my HOB filter. The small end of the funnel only has a pinhole for the ferts to slowly feed into the outgoing water. So my dose of ferts gradually goes into the tank over a period of 2-3 minutes. I just dump them into the funnel and I am done.

Would depend on how good the motor windings are....
I'd be surprised if a once daily restart shortened its life significantly...

So what about an eheim 2115?

I have recently started switching my main pump off for my sump during feedings by setting up a feed mode in my Apex. I have a significantly cleaner sump now, as I started to notice about 1/3 of the food would immediately end up going through the overflow and into the sump. I use a 15 minute feed cycle and it seems to be the perfect time limit for my community fish. I have a Rio 2500 pump and I don't think one shut down/ restart a day is going to impact its life span too much.

I understand that the pump is driven with a magnet rather than coils. This is what allows a filter like the Eheim Classics to be able to be reduced. Does this same principal allow it to be started and stopped daily with little to no issue? Am I way off base with this assumption?

Also is there a risk of the filter not being primed after this 15min feeding interval?

I dose ferts by shooting them into the hob filter to mix with water before they go into the aquarium (I don't like squirting full strength directly in the tank where a fish could get a gill full).

For feeding I use a feeding ring. For flake food especially it tends to keep it all in one place. It has also trained my fish that food is delivered there. I do locate it away from the filter and faster moving water.