The Puffer Forum

I have a couple questions about removing the biowheel. I have a tank that has the eclipse hood with a biowheel. The tank started at brackish and has been at marine levels for about a month or longer, SG 1.022. I have some live rock, and some base/dry rock was just added a few days ago. I'd estimate the weight of the live and base rock to be about 15 -20 lbs, the tank is 29 gallons with a single 2.5" GSP. My plan was to remove the biowheel after I had a bit more live rock and had given time for the dry rock to become seeded. I read some conflicting information on live rock and the biowheel being used in conjunction.

Someone said that the biowheel will essentially rob the live rock of bacteria and prevent new rock from being seeded. Someone else said that the bacteria is different on the biowheel, being aerobic as opposed to the anaerobic liverock bacteria, and therefore will not deprive the liverock, but will produce excess nitrate.

My questions:
1) Am I thwarting my liverock bacteria from propagating and seeding the base/dry rock by keeping my biowheel in place for now?
2) If I remove my bio wheel now, will I throw off my water parameters?

Seven, some of this is true in away but I would not remove the bio-wheel. If you do, it still will not make no difference with the live rock. I have owned many set-ups over 20 + years and about 18 years owning saltwater tanks with live rock and bio-wheel combos. Aerobic bacteria is an oxygen loving bacteria and they really love those bio wheels but also the same with wet dry filters. Anyways, I would just leave things like they are but its your call though. Either way it wont change anything, imo.

I though in SW set ups anaerobic bacteria was found in deep sand beds and not on live rock.

Isn't that BioWheel gonna splatter salt spray everywhere?

Thank you for the replies, and thank you for the anecdotal information Chris I just want to make sure I'm doing everything the best to my ability, I love my little smiling friends. Seeing as how I didn't realize that they could, and that it's also considered best, at least when they are older, for them to be in marine, I just want to make sure I don't make too many marine n00b mistakes.
The bio wheel is within a more or less enclosed housing and the splashing is actually pretty minimal. It doesn't really bother me anyway. The other tank has a HOB biowheel, it's a tad bit messier with salt splatter, but not too bad. They both have live rock rubble within them as well.
Thank you again for the responses