Any body else using BIO wheels?

[stainless_wm]

A college buddy got me into saltwater tanks. He also happens to work at LFS. SO I am pretty sure he is not out to sell me junk I dont need.
I consider him pretty knowledgable, about this stuff, not just because he works at LFS, but, when you talk to him, it really sounds like he has done his home work.

He runs a bio wheel in his 29.

So, I bought an Emperor 400 for my 35 gal. The thought was that this will house the bacteria for the nitrate cycle.

On another post in this site, I found out that bio wheels, are NOT SO GOOD for SW tanks. That the nitrate level will eventually start to rise.

I do 1/3 water change every few weeks. My parameters are great. Zeros across the board. Except, of course PH and SG. Which stay about 7.8 and 1.022 respectively.

My skimmer is on a timer, because it is very loud. It does run for 12 hours a day though.

If I took the emperor out, I would have to do something for circulation when the skimmer is off.

I have taken the wheels out of the emperor, and plan to monitor the tank for a few weeks while I find more info.


So I guess the question is, DOes any one else run BIO WHEELS in their salt water tank.


Any other discussion about wheels in salt is welcome/appreciated.



TIA

Wade

[rubikcube]

I ran a biowheel in my tank for about 3 months. It was never a "nitrate factory" as most people would call it. I took it out on advice from people here and I never experienced any change in the amount of nitrate being produced.

Think about it for a moment. Nitrate comes from nitrite which comes from ammonia. For your tank to be safe, all the nitrite and ammonia have to be broken down. The notion that a biowheel somehow adds nitrite or ammonia and then breaks it down later is pretty rediculous.

As long as you have liverock the biowheel won't make a bit of difference.

[lando]

I ran an Emperor 400 with two biowheels on my first reef tank. I never had a problem with NO3. The key is to have a lot of other biological filtration and keep up on the PWC. With 1.5-2lbs/gal and biweekly water changes of 15-20% you should have no problems.

[dicjones]

I have a 75 gallon with 93 pounds of live rock. I have a Tidepool II with a huge biowheel in it. I didn't buy the tidepool because of the bio-wheel, I feel the LR I have is probably enough for biological filtration, but I left the bio-wheel in because I believe it is a good product. I have yet to see a rise in nitrate and its been about a year. I also had a Eheim prfessional II before the Tidepool II and canister filters are supposed to be nitrate factories but I never had a problem with that either.

[accorddude]

I have a bio weel in my tank and i see no nitrates or trites. And I have had the tank for 2mo and the guy before me had it for several years.

[Black96WS6]

Another vote for the bio-wheel.

I have an Emperor 280 in my 35 gallon hex (reef tank) and a 30 gallon tall with an Eclipse system2 hood (octopus tank). Both have bio-wheels running.

[DeathWarp]

My biowheel works just fine. It's been in for about 4 to 5 months now and I havent had any spikes in NO3 whatsoever.

[Lagger]

Anyone else have problems with microbubbles? I've had Biowheel 200 on my 20g for a little over a month now and do not like the microbubbles it puts out. I even took the biowheel out thinking it what might be causing the problem, but nope, the pump is doing it. Anybody else have this problem?

[ianrich147]

I use an emperor 280 you will have no problems as long as you maintain it y they can produce nitrates is they are good at what they do trap waist if you dont clean them on a weekly basis(rins in tank water) you will have no3 problems also replace 1once a month with the 400 best to stager replacement also use the trays i use ceramic rings