The Petit Vapoteur blog

Everything You Need to Know About Bottom Feeders

03/16/2016 / Beginners Corner

The bottom feeder, BF, or "squonker" are terms the wider vaping public will be hearing more and more of. The "bottom feeder", literally "fed from below", is a type of vape that's still not all that widespread, but will probably become much more mainstream before long.

So what exactly is a bottom feeder? Picture a dripper that's constantly fed by a bottle of e-liquid. A self-feeding RDA, essentially. That means a flavour-focused vape with all the quality of a dripper, but with even better staying power than a regular atomiser. That's the whole point of a BF.

Yes, that really is an iStick!

To make this happen, you need kit specifically designed for the job: a BF (or Squonk) box, plus a bottom feeder dripper. The principle is ultra simple: the dripper, screwed onto its box, is directly connected to a soft plastic bottle (roughly 7 to 10ml) tucked inside the box. Part of the bottle remains accessible so you can give it a squeeze and push liquid up into the dripper. A little squeeze, and off you go with flavour-focused vaping! Squonk is supposedly the sound the bottle makes when you press it, according to our English-speaking friends… what can you do! Add to that an 18500 or 18650 battery, or even two 18350s (as on the original Billet Box from Billet Box Vapor).

The first ever squonker boxes were, historically, the Reo from Reosmods, with others following on from there: Sunbox, Gepetto, Puzzle Box, and so on. Often handmade, high-end boxes. Naturally, BF drippers followed too, such as the Cyclone from Vicious Ant or the Trinity from Galactika. Some modders, such as Norbert, adapted their famous RBA builds to turn them into BFs.

But all of this remained firmly high-end – a small market for a small niche of consumers. And yet, ever hungry for new things, vapers, apparently, started calling for bottom feeders to become more accessible. To be entirely honest, I couldn't say for certain whether it really is vapers crying out for this, or rather manufacturers who simply enjoy telling us so… Either way, €200, even €300 boxes are slowly but surely giving way to more affordable kit.

Steam Crave, for instance (the maker behind the Aromamizer), has brought out the "Steam Crave Squonker". A regulated box dedicated to bottom feeding, priced under $80, designed to pair with the new V-RDA dripper, which isn't just good-looking but also features a built-in BF connection. By "connection", we really just mean a simple screw with a hole drilled through it – that's all it is.

The Steam Crave Squonk

There are also kits available to fit certain drippers and turn them into BFs, such as the Mephisto or the Tobh. And the more hands-on DIY types won't hesitate to drill the BF connection into their RDA themselves. Now that's proper Do It Yourself!

But Steam Crave isn't the only one diving into affordable bottom feeding, with Kangertech being the first to really go all in. The DripBox BF is a complete bottom feeder setup for around €80 – all that's missing is the e-liquid. For that price, Kangertech offers a mech box with a dripper you can build yourself, or you can use the pre-built coil decks supplied, which do still come in at 0.20 ohms.

With this Dripbox BF, Kangertech is taking a genuine bet on the future, and for now, direct competitors (Joyetech and the like) aren't responding in kind. One to watch, then. So, are you ready for the bottom feeder?

Discover our Bottom Feeder atomisers

Pascal

View all comments (4)

Shadow Monkey

12/15/2018 04:07:13

Salut a tous, Mtax, tu devrais essayer le T-priv 3 de chez smok, c'est certes un clearo préfabriqué mais avec sa contenance de 8ml et sa vape orientée saveur tu devrais y trouver ton bonheur ;)

Pascal

06/14/2018 12:29:51

D'accord Romain. Je vous prête le stylo ! Cdlt.

Romain

06/14/2018 10:50:15

Hello, un petit tuto sur le "comment nettoyer une box BF" à rajouter à l'article serait sympa.

Mtax

05/9/2018 02:58:44

J'adorerais avoir une box BF parce qu'en plus d'offrir une contenance correcte, je les trouve tout simplement sublimes (j'aime bien le minimalisme et les setup discrets). Mais surtout, je ne suis pas du tout à l'aise avec la loi d'ohm ni même avec les résistances à faire soi-même, alors je me contente d'une box électro avec un clearomiseur Cascade de Vaporesso, qui a une contenance pas dégueu mais très loin d'être suffisante pour faire une journée. Avoir plus de contenance quand on vape beaucoup et à 90w, ça ne serait pas du luxe pour tenir un peu plus de trois heures... J'attends donc qu'on nous propose une box BF avec en plus une autonomie décente (ce qui n'existe déjà pas sur les box "tradi" pour les gens comme moi qui font des gros nuages). Pour l'instant, ça reste un rêve... Mais qui sait, peut-être dans un futur pas trop lointain, mon rêve sera devenu une réalité :)