Whoneedsavacation

I am a little afraid they are nesting in the tub.. I couldn't find a trail to it. This morning there were so many, the surface a moving black sea, that I did resort to poison around the rim of the tub and a methodical cleaning process. Fortunately, the tub structure is faux wood, so unless they short out the electronics they probably won't do permanent damage. I had scattered ant bait around the slab last night and they appeared to be carrying granules of it, so hopefully enough got into the nest to eradicate the nest. Wherever it is.

I just did a drain and refill, the tub is all nice and fresh and ready to use -- and crawling with ants. They are active everywhere right now. I sprayed the slab around the tub and the sides of the tub, but am reluctant to spray the rim where the ants are circling. Last time this happened, my hubby went nuts with the spray and we had ant poison and ant carcasses in the tub... I wound up doing a drain and refill once most of the bodies were filtered out. Any ideas?

I have had a much better time with the Leisure Time brand strips (for bromine) than other brands I have tried. Color changes are much clearer. Of course if you are color blind to any extent it could be problematic! They do make digital strip readers.

She could be sensitive to the shock (MPS), that's a fairly common sensitivity. Bromine apparently bothers more people than chlorine, but if you switch in the summer that's probably not the culprit.

I've read on this forum that MPS is a common chemical to be sensitive to. If shocking "heavily" means more than a normal amount of MPS, it may well be the MPS.

QUOTE (Rik-B @ Feb 3 2009, 06:02 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I own a Vita Spa Rendezvous hot tub with a water capacity of 1930 litres. I've been using Spaguard spa lite sachets (non-chlorine shock) fortnightly along with eco one monthly and bromine tablets in a floater turned down to minimum. I shock after each use or once a week, whichever comes first, so you may want to shock more often. Also, if you didn't add sodium bromide at startup, it's possible you don't have enough bromine reserve for the shock to be effective. How many ppm of free bromine do you mesure with the floater turned down? It's possible you are smelling bromine/chlorine if it is running high. Does it smell like the tabs?

Am I missing something? Wouldn't it be easier to remove the N2 stick and just run it as a normal bromine-tab tub until the next fill?

No one have ant issues?

So, we got the first heavy rain of the season and all the ants that got floated out of their hill wound up running around the rim of the tub. My hubby felt the right approach was ant spray, so he sprayed around the rim. I wasn't entirely thrilled with this, although he was careful not to spray in the water, plenty of sprayed ants wound up in there. Now I have some problems/questions: 1) What's the best way to get rid of all the ant carcasses that wound up in the water? They wind up on the surface of the filter and wash off into the tub again when I pull the filter out. It will take a vast number of iterations to get rid of them all. I thought of putting cheesecloth in the filter basket to catch them there -- do I need to worry about straining the pump? 2) The residual poision that wound up in the water -- is this a big worry? It's probably a tiny amount. Would the shock and sanitizer burn it off? (I have a bromine floater tub). Would it or the ants themselves with their formic acid affect the chemistry? My inclination is drain and refill, but hubby is resistant. 3) Our tub is a Freeflow Passport. It has a slightly rough granite-like shell. Do I need to worry about damage to the material from the ant spray? It's been thoroughly wiped down with damp paper towels. 4)Is there a better way to handle a situation where you have hundreds if not thousands of ants running around under your cover? Thanks for your accumulated wisdom.

I'm usually looking for 3-5 ppm of "total bromine". I don't think it's all in the form of hypobromous acid.... does it make sense to think of it that way?

IMO it comes down to : Bromine is easier to use for most people as you can leave it alone for a few days and not worry too much. We travel often, so that's a real consideration for us. However, people actually seem to report more irritation from bromine than from chlorine. I use bromine and feel no need to change, but there are lots of chlorine fans here.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that you do make chlorine gas in the tub, but the amount is so small it's effectively zero? So, no, a green cloud of death won't emerge from the tub, but yes the same reaction is going on, just at a low level.

I'd go with a floater in the tub.... the top of the line one costs less than $20 and they are easy to use.

Under the assumption that you have a bromine floater along with the silver ion system and just forgot to mention it, I had this problem until I got a floater with a locking ring. I could never maintain adjustement on the other styles I tried, and I need to cut it back to rock bottom to get a correct level with our rather small tub. Also, excessive shock may register as bromine on a test strip. If your skin isn't getting irritated, I don't think having too high a level is actually harmful, within reason, but I could be wrong and would defer to the experts.

I'm not sure exactly, we need chem_geek or one of his peers for that, but chlorine gas is a definite possibility and potentially lethal. Kids, don't do this at home! Seriously, people have died from throwing too many unused household cleaning products down the drain at once, let alone concentrated reagents. The classic one is ammonia and chlorine bleach.

Thanks Richard. That makes sense! Can you tell I'm not a chemist?

I'm officially too busy and should probably be spending more time *in* the tub! A week ago I swapped out filters and put the one I took out into cleaning solution to soak. I forgot about it. For a week. And we had a LOT of wind, so the bucket accumulated a bunch of leaves. So this morning I remembered to take the filter out and rinse it. It *looks* OK except for some brown staining where the leaves were sitting on the filter (which floats slightly in solution, so it needs rotation to soak evenly). Did I wreck the filter, or is it probably OK? Would soaking it in a bleach solution be a good idea to get the staining out and kill anything the leaf debris might have incubated? Or should I just get a new filter. They aren't THAT expensive... but this one had only been used the one time.

As far as I know, any brand or style of tub can use any method with the exception that wooden tubs do best with chlorine. Chlorine actually seems to cause fewer cases of hypersensitivity that bromine, but it takes regular (daily) addition of chlorine to keep the tub ready to use. I think you can superchlorinate and go away for a while, but the tub may be too chlorinated when you get back -- there have been some very recent threads on that subject. I use a bromine system with a floater, and it's very low maintenance. I keep the floater full (usually), shock after use or weekly and check the stats every couple of days or so. No need to do anything for time away less than a couple weeks. We have had dry skin when the bromine level was too high, but no problems when it is maintained properly. There are also bromine systems that rely on shock to activate a bromine reserve rather than using a floater, but I believe this method takes more maintenance to keep the tub sanitary. Biguanide (Baqua) is supposed to be easy on the skin, but if you don't do everything right you may need to switch to another system to clean out the resistant stuff. Do a search here, there are discussions on what goes wrong when biguanide goes wrong. I remember something about peanut butter goo and white mold, but I'm no expert here. The stuff is supposed to be great when it's working, though.

Why would the air temp make a difference? Either the directions refer to the water temp, or they are intended for a body of water that is not temperature-controlled!

I want to revisit the foaming issue. The common wisdom is that foam comes from soaps that we bring into the water via suits and "lotions and potions" on our skin. However, my husband and I rarely use "lotions and potions" and when I do use lotion or hair product, I shower before tubbing. We probably do carry in some residual detergent, but that's about it. When it's late we use no suits, and our suits are normally rinsed only, not cleaned with soap or detergent. Furthermore, the foaming seems to start about 2 months after a refill, no matter what the usage level has been. So I wonder if hot tubs actually saponify the body oils we inevitably do bring into the tub. We do keep tubs slightly alkaline, and soap is formed when an alkaline material hydrolyzes a fat or oil. You can make soap in your kitchen with vegetable oil and lye. If this really happens, it seems that some amount of foaming is an inevitable part of aging water, and yet another reason one needs to refill occasionally. It also takes away some of the "stigma" of foam. Am I nuts?

I tend to get a similar reaction to plain old dry skin, and it's worse in the winter. Cutting back on MPS may help. Another simple thing to try is putting on moisturizer after using the tub!

filter is set to 2hrs twice a day. I've been putting it on and leaving it when I check on the tub, too, which should give it an additional 2hrs. I've shocked it 5 or 6 times and it's still somewhat cloudy. It wasn't THAT bad to start with, only slightly cloudy, but it was out of bromine, so I'm sure that is the cause of the cloudiness. I may decide to drain and refill, it's about due anyway. It just seems awfully slow to clear.

Every once in a while I mess up and let my floater run out of tablets. This time, the water had clouded before I realized I'd let this happen (the strip-tested level doesn't decline gradually and linearly, it seems to plummet). It's been re-tableted and shocked rather heavily for the last 72 hours, and tests high for bromine. I'm assuming it's sanitary now, but it still appears cloudy. I added some flocculant this morning and changed out the filter. It seems to me the last time this happened, the water "behaved" differently and got cloudier (and greenish) initially, but cleared up rather quickly. I'm just wondering what other people experience in these circumstances. I never feel quite the same about the water again after this has happened. Sigh. It will soon me time for a drain and refill again. Tub will get used more heavily now that hte evenings are cool.

I wouldn't refill if the water is still pristine, but I find mine gets sluggish (air bubbles persist a really long time, looking cloudy) and foams excessively after a few months. At that point, refillling is like a revelation, the water is Soooooooooo nice. You don't need to do it for safety reasons, I think (eventually all the by-products of the chemical reactions that keep the water sanitary might interfere with the overall chemistry, but I think that would take longer than a few months) but for asthetic reasos, and for the life of the tub itself.

Thanks waterbear, good to see you! That helps quite a bit.