New setup

exelent choice. I like marineland alot. Plenty of filtration, and plenty of heat.
 
"how loud...?"
It's not. It just kinda hums a little. the most noise mine ever make is if I let the water get below their output. Then they splash and make a water sound, but I think that goes for any filter. That and if the intake is over your airstone, they will pick up bubbles and make some noise.

The 100 watt will be fine for your tank, but you may want to consider going with the next size larger in the bio-wheel filter. I always double my tank capacity when choosing a filter. You can't over-filter, so I just go for it. It clears the tank up real fast whenever I stir up the gravel or anything.
 
I'm not sure about the penguins, but I have an emperor 400, and my wheels have not stopped at all. I know it's not a good idea, but I haven't changed my water in 2 1/2 weeks and the wheels are still going. I would imagine that the penguins are the same way.
 
Mine only stopped onece. I cleanede the filter and the intake tube, put it all back together, and still there wasn't enough water to spin the wheel. I took out the impeller housing and found that a peice ok grass had wrapped around the impeller. I took it out, and it works just fine! YAY! :dance I've been running about a month on the same filter and it hasn't been a problem yet. (I know, its time to change it! I'll get to it when I can.)
 
Do penguins have 2 filter cartridge places? My emperor does and I use two replacement filters on each side, (there are 2 sides on the 400). When the filter starts slowing down, I rinse of the back filter and move the front filter to the back and put the rinsed one up front. That way there is always helpful bacteria in one of them.
 
Are you going to be using CO2 injection on this? If so, you don't want this much surface agitation, since this will gas off the CO2 being added.

Bio-wheels can get stalled--the support pins need to be cleaned every now and then, along with the housing for those pins. Eventually the pins may wear to the point where cleaning doesn't work, so must be replaced. I ran the same wheel in a 5 for 2 years before it started slowing significantly--and a monthly cleaning kept it running for quite some time after that. A complete replacement should not be needed very frequently.
 
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