I have a 55 that I have has set up for 1 yr. I had a small aquaclear and a whisper 60 (I think 300gph). I took out the small aquaclear, 3 months ago and added an emporer400. The media (bag) for the emporer has a lot of biological growth on it, but my bio wheels appear to be pretty sweaky clean. How long (on average) does it normally take for the wheels to start growing / collecting biological material?
Emperor Bio Wheel
- Thread starter nattybrack
- Start date
I think it took my penguin 330 (marineland biowheel) about 3-6 months before I noticed anything like that on them and after a year or so they are really gunky and dont turn as well.
Filter seems to be working like a champ, although I'm lookin' forward to some good gunk. Another couple months then... guess I can stop checking every morning. LOL. Much appreciation for the info.
Nope... It may be a little bit darker but it's not a deep brown. The spray bars are working well. I packed the extra trays with a lot of substrate. Possible I over packed, and this is why the wheels aren't changing? Or other possibilities?
The biowheel(s) only need to turn slowly to quite effective. When the wheels are new, they turn like a greased pig. Once the wheels become saturated with water and bio-film, they are suppose to slow down. Unfortunately, the Penguin design has a well known operation flaw in that the biowheels can stop turning altogether because of the filter clogging or crud getting on the bearings. I noticed the Mini model is pretty much hassle free, though. As you probably already know, the Emporer design is a lot more reliable and corrected the Penguin problem.
What? My first post? That's news to me
Last edited:
My first penguin 330 that I had on my tank exibited some of the problems u speak of. It would stop turning sometimes. But only on one side. Then I got a new one. I put one of the established biowheels in the new filter in hopes of speeding the culture of the new biowheels and it moved just fine. So then I cleaned my first one throughly and it worked just fine. Oh yea I knew as long as the bio wheel is turning it is doing good.
You might want to get rid of some of the substrate. Although it suprise me that it hasn't changed colors much. Mine usually start in a few days. I think I have about 8 of them currently running. The only thing I fill them with is floss.