Martin, I regularly use the following and it does not seem to cause any problem:
frequency(11) = 21600.,
fields(1,11) = 'THETA ',
levels(1,11) = 1.,
filename(11) = 'SST',
frequency(31) = 2635200.,
fields(1,31) = 'THETA ',
filename(31) = 'THETA',
fileflags(31)= 'D ',