Correct me if I'm wrong, but the purpose of "cycling" is to prepare the "biological filtration" (aka Live Rocks) to handle the bio-load of tank inhabitants.
For a bare bottom, live-rock free, quarantine tank, do you still need to "cycle"? Not sure what you will be cycling if there are no live rocks.
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Additional Information:
The plan is to buy a 15-gallon tank to act as a deploy-able/move-able quarantine tank. The plan is to purchase the QT on the 2nd week of cycling the main system. This will give me something to do while the main tank is cycling.
The first batch of tank inhabitants will be placed in the QT for approx. 6 weeks for quarantine. The QT will be maintained at 1.021 SG (hyposalinity). This will kill most parasites, especially ICK.
After the first batch of fishes are transferred to the DT, the next batch of fishes will then be quarantined. This process will repeat until all desired inhabitants are quarantined and transferred to the DT.
This QT will then be emptied and stored when I'm done stocking the tank. It will be commissioned as a hospitalization tank if needed.