Ideas to quiet down Bio-wheel Filter?

Hey guys, I have a Penguin 450 Bio-Wheel, and this thing is loud; unless i keep my water line right at the lip, and as my tank is in my bedroom, it's getting pretty old. I've thought about what would be the best way to slow down the water coming off the wheel, and all i could come up with was maybe a plastic "gate" to slow water and divert, so not so much of the splashing trickling noise would occur. Anyone have any DIY ideas for me?

 

mabe do something like the aqua c remora does with the output.put some acylic on it so the water flows down it diffusing into the tank water?

 

Sounds good i'll def. check that out. Anybody else?

 

If you have a good amount of established live rock in the tank just get rid of it. Biological filtration should happen in the rocks/sand. A biowheel should be unnecessary if the rest of the system is setup with enough surface area for nitrifying bacteria to colonize.

If that's not the case and you do need the extra biological filtration I don't know, I'm not familiar with it. Just making sure you're aware that a lot of (not all) tanks don't actually need the bio wheel.

Maybe you could find a way to keep the water level higher? An auto topoff system maybe?

 

i second the "get rid of it" assuming you have enough live rock.good skimmer.

if you want to get rid of only the biowheel you could do that to. i removed mine so i could run chemi-pure once in a while

i pulled the spray bar out. plugged the opening with a cap for a test tube from one of my test kits. then stuck the spray bar back in.

getting rid of the spray bar will quiet it down alot.

 

cut off the lip on the end and extend whats left with a piece of acrylic

 

My tank is about 3 months old now, and has about 15lbs live rock. I don't think that's enough to get rid of my filter is it? i also run a Aqua Clear 45 filter with bio-media. i added the Bio-wheel as extra filtration as i didn't have a skimmer, until tonight. With my new Coralife 65 Super Skimmer and my Aqua Clear 45 would i be ok to kill the Bio-wheel for now?

 

That's not a lot of rock for a 55g, but if you have another filter on there as well with bio media it might be OK. Although I'm honestly not sure how much bioload your eels will produce.

To be clear, a biowheel and biomedia do not perform the same function as a skimmer. A skimmer removes waste before it breaks down completely this will prevent some amount of nitrates from forming because the nutrients never break down into ammonia in the first place.

A biowheel can only produce nitrates from ammonia, not get rid of nitrates. You may want to consider a couple big pieces of live rock (or dry rock from bulkreefsupply or marcorocks etc). These will sometimes perform both nitrifying and de-nitrifying functions if some low oxygen zones can form inside the rock for the de-nitrifying bacteria to live.
That way you can get rid of the extra filters, less equipment, less electricity, less potential noise from the filters, less clutter in the tank etc.

Also a sand bed will help with nitrification (not de-nitrification unless it's 3"+ deep) so if you don't have that you could consider adding a sand bed too, it provides a large amount of surface area for nitrification.

Just an idea for you.