another bio wheel question

[trido]

Just thought I'd log in to give you all some more work. Just to get my hands wet until i get my 90 up and running i bought a 12 gal. eclispe beginner set up. mostly cause it is acrylic and want to recycle it for a refuge later. i can by a 20 glass and use the pump/hood for a QT tank.

I have in the tank right now
10 lbs. of so called live sand (aragonite with water) to help cycle faster
15 Lbs of cured live rock
After two days the tank was swarming with pods. It is now day 6
Temp 77
Amm. <.025
nitrite <0.5
Nitrate jumped from 20 to about 30 from yesterday to today
Im guessing that the tank , a week old is cycling fast.
salinity 35
gravity 1.026
im using mardel 5in1 test strips. id have bought better but the wife is pissed off already..LOL.. She does support the hobby as its better than(say...Smoking crack..)but sometimes doesnt understand the $$ involved.

My Questions are.
Should i remove the Bio wheel? I was reading the forums and caught something saying this is a nitrate factory and could actcually make the live rock work harder.

Also the whimpy tank has a 5000K 18 wattt flourescent bulb and is 15 inches deep. Will i be able to keep any types of polyps in it?

And lastly. With regular weekly water changes do i have to have a skimmer on this tank as i dont want to dump a bunch of money into it?

 

[cjsrch]

bio wheel leave it on. just take it off and shake it in the tank water once a week if your worried. and it is very important you do this in tank water

if your woried about nitrates id be more concerned about the filter cartidge itself



you may want to retrofit a pc light under there

 

[Drew Nietert]

I have two Bio Wheel 125's. Both going for right at two years now.
I have never had a nitrate problem at all - ZERO every time I measure and I have 3" of live sand and about 20-25lbs of live rock.

I used biowheel on my fresh waters several years ago and again, never had a problem with nitrates. Those setups had all artificial plants and rocks.

 

[ChrisRD]

In reality it probably won't make much of a difference whether you run with the biowheel on or off (although there is some potential for it to contribute to problems). The live rock and sand will provide adequate biological filtration and the biowheel is redundant and unnecessary IME.

Personally if I were going to have any type of filtration on a tank that size I would probably use a small skimmer. With a tank that size you can do without skimmers/filters all together if you keep-up with weekly water changes.

As for the lighting, it will probably be too weak for all but the lowest light stuff. Check out this link, might give you some ideas for a future upgrade:
http://www.inlandreef.com/eclipse.html

JMO & HTH