Mobile Bay Reef Keepers

Lots of the time people will remove the bio-wheels for the same reason they would remove the bio-balls out of a sump, because they seem to be nitrate factories. You get all the bio-filtration you will need from your LR and LS.

Then what's the point of them and why would they put them on there if they can actually cause problems?

They work great for freshwater, but for a reef tank you just don't really need them.

GermanShepherdGirl wrote:Then what's the point of them and why would they put them on there if they can actually cause problems?

Bio-wheels are great filters for non-reef tanks. Fresh water and marine fish-only tanks, they're excellent for doing what they are designed to do, which is convert ammonia(fish poop) to nitrate. In a reef tank you don't want extra nitrates.

This brings up another question. Since I am not using the bio-wheels in my emperior 400, then is it doing a good enouth job for my 55 gal with only carbon filters and media cartons or do I need to upgrade this filtration?

Sorry, just skimmed thru here, but you don't have any corals do you?
I should have paid more attention

If you aren't raising any corals the biowheel would be useful for you, it would help convert ammonia & nitrites to nitrates, and fish are more tolerant of nitrates than nitrites. Just a thought.

I've had pretty bad luck with little fish in the past.. so no telling

And I could probably believe he got stuck on your seio.. My purple tang used to get stuck to the side of my overflow all the time, I'd pry him lose and he would be fine.. at little stressed out, but fine otherwise.

krystyn,
i did the same damn thing pos skimmer, and to much bio load i had
stuff floating for weeks.you could of opened up a sushi bar.i was getting
out of the hobbie b4 learing from these guys.

I thought about getting out of it for a while too but now I'm glad I didn't! Good thing I don't have any kids. Between the money we spend on the dogs, my tank, and my husband getting back into paintball....I can't afford kids!

Brandon,

To answer your question, do I have any corals? Yes.
I have a leather finger softie, some metallic green star polyps, and some (I'm not sure what the name is) brown grass looking stuff on one of my LR. I got this from Jackie at Progressive Marine.

So back to my originial question, is my emperior 400 with no bio-wheels good enough to have now and for the future of more corals?

Here's another open ended answer. It really depends on what corals you want to keep. You will most likely have to upgrade your skimmer, the CPR backpacks seem to have the best reviews for hang on skimmers. You may want to consider adding a sump in the future, it's something to think about, even a smaller one would help and add to your total water volume as well as oxygen exchange. The emperor with carbon will help draw out organics, but isn't going to do a tremendous amount.
Right now I would stick to corals that pull organics from the water, or like more nutrients. The GSP's should be fine, but keep them on a rock away from your other rockwork, or they'll take over in no time.

How long has this tank been running?

I started the setup in early August, so about 5 to 5 1/2 months. Perhaps this is another thing, that I maybe moving to fast!

You may be right about 5 and 1/2 months being to soon if you had anything that was really sensitive to poor water quality but the corals and fish that you have are not particularly delicate. I would like to know how often you feed the fish. That may be an indicator of poor water quality but a tank that is 5 and 1/2 months old should not have any ammonia or nitrite unless you are seriously overfeeding and not doing water changes. The other reason would be if your tank is over stocked and I don't think so.
None of your corals really need to be fed so you shouldn't (in my opinion) be feeding them. Others will disagree with that because they have had success feeding all corals but generally you have enough already in the tank for the ones you have. In my 55 my fish of which there are four get fed protein maybe twice a week and only my Purple tang gets fed every day and that is only seaweed on a clip. No algae of any kind other than coralline in the tank. Also, a 55 gallon is too small for a blue tang and also too small to have any more than one tang in it. Yellow, Purple, and Scopas are best for that size tank. A healthy tang though would not be sucked into a powerhead because they are very good swimmers. Probably among the best swimmers for fish that live in and around coral reefs.

James

I feed my fish once every night (pellets or frozen brine shimp). I have some kale on a clip for the yellow tang. Would this be too much, and if so how often do I need to feed them?

See this post about feeding fish. I used to feed mine twice a day until this post. Now I only feed about every other day.

http://www.mbrk.com/viewtopic.php?t=3175

Hi;

Once every other day sounds pretty good at most. I would do 2 to 3 times a week and continue to put algae on a clip everyday for tang.

James