Chem testing question

[Matak]

When I first started my tank, I tested regularily for the first, oh say three months. Nothing ever changed so my testing tapered off and now I hardly test at all. Even when I do, the results are always good.

If the nitrofixers(?) are well established, what could possibly happen to cause spikes?

[JSchmidt]

It's usually something that sneaks up on you... a fish that's died and is decomposing, a filter that's stopped working for some reason, an gradual increase in bioload with fast growing fish, getting carried away and feeding too much, that kind of stuff.

If you regularly observe your tank and keep up on maintenance, it's much hard for those kinds of things to surprise you.

HTH,
Jim