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Originally Posted by DarkRevoultions
So I'm guessing the penguin bio-wheel isn't really good?? I thought that the bio-wheel exposes nitrites or nitrates into the air :S
I have an aqua clear and it does keep my water clear... but I like penguin filters too. Which one does a better job?
My friend uses penguin and it does the same job as mine pretty much O_O
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Allow me...
The bio-wheel is a great concept, but because marineland's design sucks, its nowhere near as effective as it claims, and is reduced to nothing more then a gimmick.
Its supposed to act as a wet/dry of sorts, by providing the bacteria with more oxygen. Unfortunately the design is faulty and the whreel often stops spinning for long periods of time allowing the wheel to dry out on one side and killing the beneficial bacteria. The side left submerged still has bacteria on it, but is not receiving the extra oxygen, so its the same as just adding another filter cartridge to house bacteria.
The small penguin filters rely on the water coming out of the slide to turn the wheel. When the filter cartridge starts building up debris, the amount of water coming out of the slide is reduced. Often to a level that does not allow the wheel to operate properly or at all in some cases. The wheel also sits in a plastic track that is poorly designed. I don't know if its friction from being plastic on plastic or the size of the track, but a lot of them won't allow the wheel to spin freely out of the box. This can be remidied by adding a lubricant... But should that be necessary?
The larger emperor bio-wheels incorporate a spray bar to move the wheels. While its a bit of an improvement from the penguins, it also has its faults. The spray bar gets easily clogged, and often leaks, again leafing to no wheel movement and ultimately, dead bacteria colonies.not to mention the extra noise from the spray bar.
Then there's the media itself. The biowheels are esentially a folded piece of porous paper, and though porous as it may be, it doesn't provide anywhere near as much surface area as the aquaclear110 which boasts an amazing 4l of media space. (Same as a lot of canisters) and the included bio-max pellets provide tons of surface area on their own. Alongside the sponge and whatever other media you chose, the aquaclear provides much more media space.
And of course, there's the flow rate. The aquaclear 110 pushes 100gph mpre then its marineland counterpart (emperor400 @ 400gph). And to put it simply, higher flowrate= more suction at the intake= better mechanical filtration.
That's only a few of the reasons the aquaclear is infinitely better. I didnt even touch on the long term money saving of not replacing cartridges or the patented re circulation feature built into the aquaclear filters. (Pretty nifty if I must say so)
...The choice is clear
...AQUA clear. Lol