With dread in my heart I did water tests this evening and was a bit amazed. It was one of those cases where I was just distracted by other things and 'I'll do the tests tomorrow' syndrome. It went one and on... It was the same with water changes. It has been probably a month and a half for either in a little 20 gallon cube.
Oddly everything is OK.
In this small of a tank I was a bit surprised but not in general as to larger tanks. This evening's test results were as follows.
PH -- 6.2
Ammonia -- 0.25... not a factor as with other parameters it equates to like 0.0004 bad ammonia.
Nitrites -- 0.0
Nitrates -- 10-15 PPM.
With my tank being heavily planted I attribute the health to the plants. Since I often scoop out moldy meal worms that neither the cichlids or rope fish eat I really expected the nitrate level to be off the wall but they are OK.
I also give credit for these good results to my using under gravel filtration along with the built in sponge filter. There is just no other filter system that gives as much filter area as under gravel.