Help, Bromide tablets dissolved in 2 hours.

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PolarisRich

Member
Feb 4, 2023
11
Ontario Canada
I'm a little angry right now because my wife and my skin feel like it's on fire.

I've had a hot tub for a few years now and I've never come across this problem before. I've been using the small bromine tablets in a floater for the past year and it's always taken 3-5 days for the pucks to totally dissolve. I keep my tub at a constant temperature of 99°.

I ran out of tablets about 3-4 weeks ago so I went to my local spa store and bought whatever brand that they were carrying at the time. So everything was fine with the dissolving time of the new tablets (3-5 days) until today. I tested the bromine, pH and alkalinity levels and everything was OK except the bromine level was down around 2 ppm. So I opened the floating dispenser and there was still a piece of the last tablet about the size of a tictac in the bottom. I added 2 new tablets to the dispenser from the same bucket that I've been using and tossed it back in the hot tub around 6pm. The wife and I went for dinner and when we got home around 8pm we decided to hop in the hot tub. I took the dispenser out of the tub and put it aside and we jumped in for an hour long soak. I never thought about checked the bromine levels because I checked them 2 hours before and I didn't notice the dispenser was empty except for that same tictac size piece that was in there from before.

The wife and I did notice a slight smell coming from the water but never really gave it much thought.

When we got out of the hot tub to close it up for the night I picked up the bromine dispenser and noticed it was empty. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me because I know I put two tablets in before I left for dinner. I decided to check the levels of the bromine and it was off the charts. 50 to 100 parts per million would be my best guess.

Now my skin feels like it's burning it and my wife is complaining about the same issue. We both had two showers so far to try to wash off some of the residual bromine.

So my question is to everyone is have they ever heard of quick dissolve bromine tabs if there is such a thing or what can cause two tablets to fully dissolve within 2 hours and not dissolve that Tic Tac size piece of the original one that was in there from the week before?



I am thinking that somehow some of the pucks got mixed into the bucket that I have. The bucket was fully sealed when I bought it with a tamper-proof lid. I've tried to look up quick dissolve bromine tablets or pucks online and I haven't been able to find anything.

I'm planning on going back to my local spa store tomorrow and complaining. I'm just wondering if I'm Justified to do that.
 
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When was the last time you dumped and refilled?
Do you know how much of the bromine was dissolved into the tub since your last refill?
How do you "activate" the bromine? (MPS, Dichlor?)
ARE YOU 1000% CERTAIN YOU PUT IN THOSE TABS? (almost all of my moments are senior moments...)

Have you read the sticky on bromine at the top of this forum? I have a hard time believing you don't know what your doing if you've had the tub going two years and this is your first issue!

I'm hoping someone more knowledgeable than I will chime in, maybe @Mdragger88...
(I know a little about bromine, been using chlorine but answering these questions might help you get a response)
 
That is terrible! I would definitely get my $$ back & discontinue using those.
You need to dilute whats in the tub with a large water replacement (the majority of the water) to prevent damage to equipment at those high sanitizer levels. If it’s close to time to purge or you haven’t ever now would be a good time.
Can you show us what you used?
Take a pic of the label & ingredients or link the product.
 
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So this was the product I was using it's made by Coral Spa. I just changed the hot tub water out maybe 3 weeks ago and it's kind of a shame to do it again so soon. I dumped half the water out and filled it with fresh water approximately 150 gallons
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I went back into my local spa store today with bucket in hand and asked for the manager and the owner. I told them my story of what happened and they had an extremely surprised look on their face. The manager opened the bucket of bromine and took a smell and said 100% this is chlorine pucks. My problem with that statement is that some of the pucks lasted 3 to 5 days and others less than 2 hours. I thought it was very unsafe if chlorine and bromine tablets were mixed in the same bucket. My best guess is that the mixture in the bromine pucks we're wrong. The owner and the manager went over to the Shelf and took off five buckets and open the tamper proof seals and smelled them. Three out of the five buckets smell like chlorine the other two had almost no smell. They then decided to pull all bromine pails off their Shelf and stop sales of that brand. I gave them my name and phone number because I wanted to hear what the outcome will be when they contact their supplier.
They wanted to compensate me for this incident by giving me two buckets of a different brand of bromine tablets. They also said that they will get back in touch with me after they get done talking to their supplier. This is the product that they gave me and I used it many times before20230207_115106.jpg
 
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You didn't say how long it had been since you dumped it before the 3 weeks ago. Possibly relevant to know, but I also noted you only dumped half. Since it's such a small body of water I believe it is prudent to change out all (after a purge if applicable, i.e. Ahh-Some!).

What a strange happenstance! At this point I would DEFINATELY dump 100% to start over. You have an indeterminate amount of CYA in there, and also boric acid, no?

Anyway, I'm hoping mystery solved on how fast it dissolved.

How is your rash? Maybe they owe you better than a free bucket of bromine for what they put you and your wife through?
 
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I used Ahh-some 3 weeks ago and changed 100% of the water. Complete cleaning job inside and out. Yesterday which was Monday I checked the pH, Bromine/Chlorine and Alkalinity
Ph 8.2
Br/Chl 10+
ALKALINITY 110
These levels were still too high so that's why I decided to drain only half the water.
As for the CYA I'm not really concerned at the moment. There was only 2 suspected chlorine pucks that went into the spa since the full water change 3 weeks ago. I'm sure if those suspected pucks were chlorine then it would have acted the same as chlorine shock and turned any bromide back to bromine.
I also don't use boric Acid in my tub.
 
Great call replacing some water 👍🏻
Very scary incident for sure with those tabs! It’s also a good thing that you are mindful & test your water frequently so you knew that something wasn’t right immediately. Bravo 👏
Glad the shop sorted it out for you & hopefully you’re now on your way to more happy hot tubbing 🫧😄
 
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So let me offer a bit of a contrarian view to what has transpired here.

You spa store people, while good of them the make the situation right and give you the tabs that you want to use, really have no clue. Their "sniff test" is not indicative of anything. When bromine tablets made of BCDMH (that's primary ingredient bromo-chloro-dimethylhydantoin) get wet, they will have a "chlorine like" odor just as trichlor tablet would. There is very little chance that the manufacturer accidentally added chlorine tablets to a bucket of bromine tablets. The two chemical products would not be manufactured on the same line for safety reasons.

Also, it is 1-bromo-3-chloro-DMH ... the tablets contain both bromine AND chlorine. When they dissolve in water, they release both bromine ions AND generate hypochlorous acid from the chlorine that is released. Then, the chlorine oxidizes any bromide ions in the water back into sanitizing bromine. That's how these tablets work - they both provide bromine and generate bromine with the addition of chlorine.

So here's what likely happened - tablets are not pure BCDMH. They are BCDMH and binders to make the BCDMH stay in a tablet form. The binder is usually some form of bicarbonate/carbonate compound and may even contain borax. Using those chemicals as a binder helps to also offset the pH decrease that will happen when BCDMH releases bromine and chlorine in the water. Not all tablets are created equal and the new brand you were sold probably just dissolves A LOT faster than your old brand. You added the tablets to the floater based on your experience with the older brand and that unfortunately did not work out in your favor as the newer brand simply dissolved too fast. This happens a lot with hot tubs that use bromine tabs - people often find that the tabs will have variable different dissolution rates and the bromine levels will go all over the place (high and low) as a person chases their tail trying to figure out the optimal conditions. It's one of the downsides of bromine tubs.

I'm sorry you and your wife developed a rash, that sucks. Hopefully you'll get everything balanced out soon. It's just one of those good lessons that you can't simply swap chemical manufacturers when it comes to pool and spa stuff.
 
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JoyfulNoise said:
So let me offer a bit of a contrarian view to what has transpired here.

You spa store people, while good of them the make the situation right and give you the tabs that you want to use, really have no clue. Their "sniff test" is not indicative of anything. When bromine tablets made of BCDMH (that's primary ingredient bromo-chloro-dimethylhydantoin) get wet, they will have a "chlorine like" odor just as trichlor tablet would. There is very little chance that the manufacturer accidentally added chlorine tablets to a bucket of bromine tablets. The two chemical products would not be manufactured on the same line for safety reasons.

Also, it is 1-bromo-3-chloro-DMH ... the tablets contain both bromine AND chlorine. When they dissolve in water, they release both bromine ions AND generate hypochlorous acid from the chlorine that is released. Then, the chlorine oxidizes any bromide ions in the water back into sanitizing bromine. That's how these tablets work - they both provide bromine and generate bromine with the addition of chlorine.

So here's what likely happened - tablets are not pure BCDMH. They are BCDMH and binders to make the BCDMH stay in a tablet form. The binder is usually some form of bicarbonate/carbonate compound and may even contain borax. Using those chemicals as a binder helps to also offset the pH decrease that will happen when BCDMH releases bromine and chlorine in the water. Not all tablets are created equal and the new brand you were sold probably just dissolves A LOT faster than your old brand. You added the tablets to the floater based on your experience with the older brand and that unfortunately did not work out in your favor as the newer brand simply dissolved too fast. This happens a lot with hot tubs that use bromine tabs - people often find that the tabs will have variable different dissolution rates and the bromine levels will go all over the place (high and low) as a person chases their tail trying to figure out the optimal conditions. It's one of the downsides of bromine tubs.

I'm sorry you and your wife developed a rash, that sucks. Hopefully you'll get everything balanced out soon. It's just one of those good lessons that you can't simply swap chemical manufacturers when it comes to pool and spa stuff.
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I have been using the same bucket of bromine pucks for the past 3 to 4 weeks. The pucks have dissolved at a constant rate of 3 to 5 days. Until Saturday when two of the pucks dissolved from the same bucket in under 2 hours. Now whether the product was mixed in the bucket with chlorine pucks or the binder and or chemical ratios were out of whack it should not have happened. Basically with those two pucks dissolving that rapidly caused the tub to react the same way as if I had thrown a large dose of granular chlorine shock into the tub.
 
JamesW said:
The manufacturer is in Ontario, maybe call, email or stop in and see what they have to say.

The bottle says available chlorine 28%.

In any case, some bromine tabs get mushy and fall apart quickly when they get wet and some dissolve slowly like they are supposed to.

www.capoindustries.com

Contact us

www.capoindustries.com www.capoindustries.com

1200 Corporate Drive. Burlington, Ontario, Canada L7L 5R6

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That's the wrong bucket that you're talking about. That is the good bucket that I've been using all long. The black bucket that says Coral Spa on it was the bucket that I was sold that had the problematic pucks. The manufacturer of the bad bucket is RBF in Quebec. I've tried to call a couple of times but nobody ever seems to answer.
 
Newdude said:
I'm real happy with the poolstore. I can't speak to being able to smell the differences, but either way, they took you seriously and were quick to react.
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JoyfulNoise said:
You spa store people, while good of them the make the situation right and give you the tabs that you want to use, really have no clue. Their "sniff test" is not indicative of anything. When bromine tablets made of BCDMH (that's primary ingredient bromo-chloro-dimethylhydantoin) get wet, they will have a "chlorine like" odor just as trichlor tablet would.
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It's subtle, but if you've smelled them both frequently you learn to identify it. It's hard to define. I think it smells like crayon soaked in chlorine. They also usually differ in dimension and density, which is what I'd have mostly used to determine the suspicion it's mixed.

I have to submit, I've never seen a chlorine tab dissolve that fast, let alone a bromine tab, and we go through not less than 150 lb of 1" tabs every month. More during certain seasons. At this point in my career, I've probably been responsible for somewhere south of 20,000lbs of 1" tabs in folks spas... so that dissolve rate is admittedly hard to wrap my head around.

If anything, I'm more kind to the theory the manufacturer has inconsistencies in their mix and the tabs are not uniformly packed. This could account for wild differences of the ratio of bromine to chlorine, and also the wild dissolve times.

Though, I'm also perplexed because a tab is on average, about .8 Oz. So assuming the puck was somehow 100% oxidizer, that's only 2 ounces of it. To get a read of 50-100, you'd need an amount much greater than this.

I could see 15ppm, or maybe 20ppm if your prior level was already high, and that could distort the test enough to make it look nuclear. 🤷‍♂️
 
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RBF International just contacted me to let me know what they're findings were into the investigation of what happened. The representative that I talk to was a very nice fellow and seem to be very knowledgeable about the incident and about their different product lines. He was also in contact with my local spa store immediately after receiving my email. He and his team went and searched for the buckets with the same date codes and lot number to find that the product was mislabeled and was also a product for a different Brand other than Coral spas. He said after their testing they found that the product that was in the bucket was NOT Bromide but a form of Dichlor, the quick-dissolving puck formulation used for shocking hottubs. He mentioned that they dissolve almost instantly when in contact with water. That seems to be what had happened but he could not explain why the first couple pucks I used took three to five days to dissolve. He then went on to explain that it's "near" impossible that the bucket was mixed with standard chlorine pucks but not 100% impossible. He then asked for my address to send me a compensation package for my troubles. Whatever that may be I won't know until it comes in.
 
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PolarisRich said:
He said after their testing they found that the product that was in the bucket was NOT Bromide but a form of Dichlor, the quick-dissolving puck formulation used for shocking hottubs.
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Wow, that's crazy.

I have never even heard of a dichlor tab.

It's a good thing you contacted them to let them know.

Hopefully, they can prevent any further problems.

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JamesW said:
Wow, that's crazy.

I have never even heard of a dichlor tab.

It's a good thing you contacted them to let them know.
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Neither have I. Seems like a potent product and an easy path to confusion and trouble.

@PolarisRich Glad they're taking care of you! The whole situation is a bit bizarre!
 
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