PaulB

Tom - Thanks for the reply. It's great to find a forum like this to help us new spa guys out! I have a couple of questions for you. My Bullfrog manual states the CH level should be between 150 - 200 PPM. What benefit is there to having CH at 350 PPM? I will definitely try Total Alkalinity Increaser (Sodium Hydrogen Carbonate) instead of the Alkalinity Plus (Sodium Bicarbonate) I've been using. This sounds like it will work better since it doesn't effect pH as much. My Bullfrog (model 552) has no controllable air venturis and has two large pumps and a smaller circ. pump. Bullfrog recommends and I have the tub set to filter for 12 hours each day (6 hrs. morning/6 hrs. evening). Could this prolonged filtering raise pH also? I have never really had pH problems with the spa until I started using the TA titration method and realized TA was lower than my test strips were indicating and tried to raise the TA. Sounds like I need to pick up the Pinpont system. Thanks!

Thanks waterbear. I sure appreciate the help!

I was hoping someone might be able to help me out on a balancing issue. I have a new Bullfrog Spa. The manual indicates to adjust Total Alkalinity to 125 - 150 PPM. My initial TA test (using titration method) indicated TA of about 60 PPM. I used Alkalinity Plus (sodium bicarbonate) to raise the TA to the 130 - 140 PPM range. pH testing (phenol red method) then indicated high pH of 8.2 or higher. I began bringing down the pH with pH decrease (sodium bisulfate) and when I finally got pH to Bullfrog specs of 7.4 - 7.6 Total Alkalinity was back down to about 60 PPM. It appears that pH and TA track proportionally but how in the heck do I reach my target levels and raise TA without raising pH or lower pH without lowering my TA? I attemped to raise TA again and pH shot up too! Very confused! FWIW - I'm using granular sodium di-chloro as my sanitizer, an occassional non-chlorine shock (potassium peroxymonosulfate) and calcium hardness is at about 200 PPM One thing I noticed is that test strips tend to vary wildly on TA levels. While my HTH titration kit indicated TA of 130 - 140, I tried using both HTH and Clean Water Blue strips and they indicated much higher TA levels??? Thanks!