Bio Wheels And Reef Tanks Go Together?

[CoralNerd]

A couple of people pointed out that I shouldn't be running bio-wheels with a reef tank. I thought that any chemical "break-downs" that occur are a good thing. Can there be "too much" of a good thing such as conversion from amonia to nitrates (or nitrites)?

I was planning on ditching my bio-wheels, but wanted to double-check with the masses before doing so?

Much Thanks!!

[JennM]

My short answer - if it ain't broken, don't fix it.

Some tanks do alright with biowheels, some seem to develop nitrate issues, so part of the solution is to remove them. I really think it's a YMMV thing.

If you're having a nitrate problem, that could be contributing to it, but look at your overall habits with the tank (feeding, cleaning etc.) and make any and all adjustments necessary to solve the problem.

We maintain a number of tanks with biowheel filtration. Some have issues, some done - *we* do the same thing with each tank - same water source, same maintenance regime etc., but depending on the feeding habits of the owner, etc. some have long term issues, and some don't.

I've got a 55 that we maintain with an Emperor 400 with 2 biowheels, we've been looking after it since we changed it over to reef from freshwater, 2 years ago - nitrates are steady at 2-5 ppm. It also has a skimmer. Light bioload, water changed every other week.

Like I said - ymmv.

Jenn

[CoralNerd]

Do you clean the filters and reuse them? I change them every 2-3 weeks, but it is kind of expensive. I have thought about using an alternative media that is more cost affordable, and more targeted towards my specific filtering needs. But then again I am learning most of my lessons the hard way.

[wharyat]

I have taken off the biowheel in mine and I don't run any filter pads, they just collect stuff where my clean up crew cant get to it, then it rots etc. I do however keep mine on to run chemiclean and phosphate media or carbon, whetever I feel is necessary.