Question about ceramic "bio" rings and reefs

[Noah_Count]

I've just recently had to move my 55 gallon tank. My wife has "rearrange the house disease" and this is about the third time it's been moved! At any rate, it's been a FOWLR sytem in the past and now that I finally have it somewhere where it won't be moved again I'm considering trying to start a reef tank.
I run an Aquaclear power filter down in my sump to help out with filtering and water turnover. It uses a foam block, carbon, and ceramic "bio rings". There's nothing these ceramic rings will hurt in a reef tank is there?
The reason I ask is because I was doing some unrelated reading of specs on a small nano cube and they said "Biological-Ceramic rings and bio balls provide the ideal enviroment for beneficial bacteria FISH ONLY tanks"
I'm not sure whether to read that as that the rings could somehow be harmful to coral or that you shouldn't count on just the rings for a bilogical filter in a reef tank.
Obviously I know live rock should be used and I have plenty, the rings are just there in my filter to help with the bio load. I'm just making sure I shouldn't take them out for some reason before I start adding reef stuff.

 

[Blown 346]

The bio balls are a definite do not use in a reef, the ceramic rings wont hurt but they can also collect detritus( food, waste) and a big enough build up of it will result in high nitrates. Therock is all you should need for the filtration.

 

[TekCat]

Blown346 is right. All you need for bio-filtration ammonia->nitrite->nitrate is adequate amount of live rock (55-85 lbs). Ceramic rings do exactly what LR does; however over time they become nitrate factories the same way crushed coral substrate does by collecting detrius. In FO tanks this is ok, since fish has very high tollerance to nitrate levels, but not corals, inverts, etc...
HTH

 

[Noah_Count]

Ok thanks,
The ceramic rings are in a mesh bag in the filter so it's a simple matter to remove them. I've got some time before I can do much of anything. I lost the one fish I had left during the move and now judging by some of my levels, the tank appears to be going through a partial cycle process again.