wineandcheese23

Hello, I just added salt chlorinator. I used bromine in a floater before, trying to change it because headaches every morning after use. Also always left skin feeling dry and itchy. I also travel a lot and out of town not able to maintain sanitizer levels, so I think the salt generator may help reduce maintenance. There are several topics I have questions on. After much googling with many varying answers, I think I ended up more confused LOL. This is a long post, so please feel free to be short and sweet since my questions are a bit wordy. I won’t take it rudely SHOCK and BROMIDE HEADACHES: I’ve read mixed opinions on shocking, including on here where shocking is more so frowned upon but SLAMing if CC > FC. I landed on the decision if I kept my bromine levels stable there was no reason to shock. The reason I didn’t like shocking is it took days for my levels to come back down to a safe amount to enter the spa. Am I totally wrong in this? I was reading about bromides and have also never truly understand free vs total chlorine (or bromine). Maybe not shocking was the result of my headaches from bromides building up? If my combined levels are high, adding more shock to increase the free chlorine would render the spa unusable for many many days. I strongly don’t think I was overdosing it. I finally bought sodium thiosulfate to help with this. SALT ELECTRODE WITH BROMINE with NaCL SALT: After adding salt and starting the chlorinating process, I can already sense I’m not going to like the smell. I’ve read you can use NaBR instead of NaCL OR save money by just adding some bromine and it will magically turn the chlorine being made from salt into bromine. Or maybe I misread it and that it’s you can add bromine and it will create a bromine reserve/bank that only kicks in if the chlorine drops too low? It got confusing... TYPES OF SHOCK: I know SLAM is recommended, but Is it OK to shock a salt water based spa with Potassium peroxymonosulfate? Still ok if I convert the chlorine into bromine? Is Potassium peroxymonosulfate what most people abbreviate as MPS or also spelled Potassium Monopersulfate? Is there any benefit to using this over bleach or sodium dichlor? This potassium seems less chemical like but is more expensive. SO MANY SHOCKS: I currently have sodium dichloro-s-triazinetrione dihydrate and also one that doesn’t have dihydrate on the end of it. One is a higher percent. Can I use either of these to SLAM? OXIDIZER NEUTRALIZING?: After the first 12 hours of adding salt and running the chlorinator my reading was 0 total chlorine so I added some sodium dichlor to help jump start it because water was getting cloudy. Ph and alkalinity are good. However my spa I think has a small ozonator. I read that with ozone, your chlorine readings with a salt water generator will typically always be zero as it neutralizes the chlorine? If so how should I know if the water is clean/safe? ENZYMES WORTH IT?: Should I use enzyme treatments with salt spas? I used it occasionally when we got the spa initially with bromine but stopped using it over time. OTHER CHEMICALS: Should I also be using scale and metal control additive? I used to use it when I first got the hot tub but have stopped. My spa is a four winds 500 gallon spa, about 2 years old. I use it maybe once every two weeks and really no one else uses it. I would use it more if it wasn’t for the headaches. I am aware the salt conversion may cause components to rust and fail. I am pretty handy, if they do I am capable of replacing. I use test strips but it sounds like I should switch to non-strip based. Will this Taylor K 2005 suffice? The K 2006 doesnt include bromine. Thank you!