Ammonia and NitrIte testing for newish tanks

[iamgroovy]

I have two tanks that have been established (cycled) for about 3 months, a 20g and a 16g. My question is, do I need to continue testing for ammonia and nitrItes since these are relatively new tanks? (consistently getting 0 on both). If so, how often should I be testing?

 

[bigtoeknee]

as long as you are doing weekly 20-25% water changes and not overstocking or overfeeding the fish once a week should be good.

 

[iamgroovy]

I do 25% to 30% water changes once a week and am very careful not to overfeed. Thanks for responding. After the tanks have been stable for say a year, is it still a good idea to test weekly?

 

[Holly9937]

Honestly, I almost never test for either !! Unless something seems wrong I don't bother. Thats not to say that weekly or so testing is a bad thing!! I test my ph and nitrate maybe every other week or so, just to make sure both are about same as usual.

 

[Kasakato]

Ditto Holly. I only test if there's a problem. Sometimes if I'm up to it, Ill do a test when I do a water change.

 

[RTR]

The only things tested in my stable, established tanks with no obvious problems are nitrate and KH. Those are done just as checks to confirm that my water change schedule is doing what I want it to do. And that testing is rarely more frequent than monthly.

BUT, if anything looks "off" in any tank, I'll run all the tests that I have available to try to define the problem.