Yes, but the question is, once the bioload is balanced across all of the filtration methods, when you remove one of those methods if its still sufficient. Thats the main reason for doing a staged approach, because this allows any bioload to transfer to the new 'location', before removing the old 'location'. In most reef tanks, it would likely be able to weather it without a problem, just due to the amount of rock we typically pile in, but if the bioload is high enough that the extra filtration is truly necessary to maintain it, there can be problems.

-Corruption