Environmental pollution by industrial wastewaters polluted with toxic heavy metals is of great concern. Various guidelines regulate the quality of water released from industrial plants and of surface waters. In wastewater treatment, bioreactors with microbial biofilms are widely used. A horizontal rotating tubular bioreactor (HRTB) is a combination of a thin layer and a biodisc reactor with an interior divided by O-ring shaped partition walls as carriers for microbial biomass. Using a biofilm of heavy metal resistant bacteria in combination with this special design provides various advantages for wastewater treatment proven in a pilot study. In the presented study, the applicability of HRTB for removing metals commonly present in textile wastewaters (chromium, manganese, cobalt) was investigated. Artificial wastewaters with a load of 125 mg/L of each metal underwent the bioreactor treatment. Different process parameters (inflow rate, rotation speed) were applied for optimizing the removal efficiency. Samples were drawn along the bioreactor length for monitoring the metal contents on site by UV-vis spectrometry. The metal uptake of the biomass was determined by ICP-MS after acidic microwave assisted digestion. The maximum removal rates obtained for chromium, manganese, and cobalt were: 100%, 94%, and 69%, respectively.