Bio-wheel effectiveness?

[wrek]

I accidentally left my biowheels off for a couple of days (my penguin 350 has no filters in it, just runs the bio wheels) and my nitrites jumped way up, in two days. Think what you want but I run biowheels on all my tanks.

 

[WeedCali]

Not really a good argument, wrek. You dont have any other media in the filter besides the BioWheels so of course your going to see something happen. any other media you put in there will colonize enough to hold the nitrates down just fine.

 

[CWO4GUNNER]

I used them for a while and tried to measure there effectiveness chemically & mechanically like I have measured other filters and I can tell you that my finding are that they are quite impressive to show guest who aren't fish keepers how cool they twirl. Other then that they do absolutely nothing and if they do its unmeasurable. I finally got the hint when my Photos plants which grow the all my HOB containers dropped all toxins and maintained them at very low levels. I think I have 6 bio-wheels sitting in the garage in a Walmart bag for about 2 years now. As soon as I find the right size box Ill send them off to the AC member I promised them to.

 

[wrek]

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. I run a penguin 350 JUST for the biowheels. I also run a canister filter. I'm working on getting more plant action so I can remove them.. like Gunner.

 

[Jill-O]

All of our tanks have biowheels in addition to the other types of filters (canisters and/or other HOB's). We uses those plastic, non-disposable "super cartidges" in all our HOB's and tons of bio-balls in the canisters so we have tons of media to host the benificial bacteria. I look at the biowheels we have as an extra safety net. We've not had any problems with the wheels stopping.