I too have some real hard water I needed to deal with. I ended up with a 6 month old HotSpring saltwater hot tub for 1/3 of the sticker price. Folks I bought it from knew nothing about water chemistry, and kept the Vanishing Act XL in there, once a week, thinking it was like an oil bobble (that sinks?). Needless to say, it was spent, I tried 24h of Vanishing Act mode in the tub, water still hard af.
Before spending the $85 cad on a new one, I tried getting some scalding hot water in a bucket, pouring pool salt in until fully saturated (i.e. further salt addition would no longer dissolve), and stirring the Vanishing Act pillow in the brine for several minutes, every few hours. I let it sit in here over night.
Tried vanishing act mode again the next day, and within 6 hours my hardness was down to normal tub levels, and 6 after that it was perfectly in the salt tub range. One time use my ass! Freshwater company hates me for this one simple trick 😜
