How do I test sshguard on debian?

I want to replace fail2ban with sshguard because it uses less resources. I installed sshguard via apt-get and it seems to be running on my debian wheezy server:

# /etc/init.d/sshguard status
sshguard is running.

How do I check if it really works?

I tried to log in with a false password, fail2ban banned me after 6 wrong login attempts for some minutes. but now with only sshguard running I get never banned.

What is the default settings on a fresh install? The documentation is quite overwhelming and doesn't show a short description how it works