2 biowheel filters better than 1?

I am going to convert my 45 gallon (tall) freshwater aquarium over to a live reef tank. I live in the middle of missouri so my lfs selection is very limited and doesn't seem very knowledgable. I was wonderin if ii would be better to mount a marineland penguin 350 on my tank or to mount a penguin 150 and penguin 200 on each side of tank....penguin's are the only biological filters available at lfs....i have not seen wavemakers or powerheads to create good water movement so i was thinkin a filter on each side could be more effective...any thoughts or does it matter

 

Ebay and craigslist are going to be your best friends.
Those filter's will be worthless for marine tanks, and will cause more problems than solve. HOB filters should be used for running carbon and/or phosban and nothing else. If you do run them, you will need to take off the wheel portions, as they will just rapidly produce nitrates. The wheel's do not contain enough anaerobic area to promote proper bacteria colonies in SW like they do in fresh water.
The best filtering you could possibly get will come from a quality protein skimmer.
Before going too far, I need to ask: Did you ever run medication of any kind in the tank while it was set up for FW?

 

as for medication i occasionally use accu-clear just to clear cloudiness and hob filter with activated carbon, but steer clear of anything else because of the sensitivity of my pair of electric blue crayfish.....so as for the protein skimmer i'll check old posts for brands (or could use a recommendation to save time) and since the biowheels aren't necessary will a whisper hob filter be sufficient for running activated carbon? But now i've got a whole new set of questions rattling around such as will the whisper filter and protein skimmer be enough water movement or do i need to start looking at powerheads or wavemakers

 

you will need powerheads. ebay has good deals. koralia is a good brand without being too terrible expensive. maybe 2 koralia 2's?

 

Brian, the Marineland 350, a good protein skimmer and two koralia 2's would be fine for a 45 gal. As Pack said take off the wheels. The marineland is pretty much the same filter as an emperor, which is what I ran on my 55. Does it come with two empty filter? If it does, I'll show you how to make your own filters and save some $$.